Waking Up in Vegas
by Glowing Insanity
Summary: Emma didn't want this. Not at all. Reluctantly going to a party kicked it all off; even more so when she was unwillingly roped into a drinking game. Now, she was stuck in Las Vegas with a flat cellphone, no United States money, no memory of the previous night and a worried sister back in Ottawa. But anything can happen in Sin City, right? Chapter 9 is up!
1. Chapter 1: Good Decision, Bad Decision?

**New fic? Again? I don't know.**

 **Anyway… yeah, this is pretty much what it looks like, unless you're thinking about something else.**

 **I got inspired for this some time ago, yet at the first instance I was going to do completely different people. But once RR came to a close, I had other ideas… and now this popped up.**

 **I don't own anything from Total Drama, counting Ridonculous Race, as well.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 1 – Good decision, bad decision?**

 **xx**

 _SLAM!_

"EMMAAAAAAA!"

Flinching in fright, I looked up from my law textbook, placing my finger on where I had left off. Really? _Now_?

"Okay, what is it?" I asked, turning round as my kid sister Kitty bounded in, looking typically excited with her pink satchel loosely hanging off her arm.

"Oh my gosh, _so_ much happened today!" She replied, leaping up and down on the spot. "First, Clara Porter got asked to the dance by-"

"Yeah, can you save it for later? I'm busy right now."

"But you're _always_ busy! Can't you take a break? Like just one?"

"Kit, I have a big assignment due in a month's time, and I'd _really_ like it if you'd go do your own thing."

"Okay, sorry…" Kitty slumped over with a sigh, slowly walking back out. I turned back to my textbook, only for Kitty to speak up again. "Just saying, but Mom's getting worried about you being busy all the time. Ever since you broke up with Jake… which was three years ago. Three years ago, Emma."

I could only roll my eyes at that. "Well I want to succeed in life, okay? And _do not_ mention that little weasel's name again, please."

"Alright, I'll be quiet now!"

Groaning, I thumped my head on the textbook, clenching both my fists. Why was it so hard to at least find some peace and quiet? If only I had taken up a room at the hostel. But then I'd have to cope with noisy, smelly dorms that are cleaned only once every fortnight. That's just disgusting, and _definitely_ not a good study environment.

Footsteps reached my ears, and I looked over my shoulder, ready for whatever else Kitty had to say. But instead of poking her head in, she just slowly walked past, busy on her phone with something under her arm.

"Okay, back to studying…" I muttered, turning back to face the textbook.

"Emma, phone!" Another voice called, this time my mother.

Huh, funny. I didn't even hear the telephone ring. I got up and went downstairs, grabbing the phone from the hallway table and pressing 'talk'.

" _Hey Em, there's a party at Rhys and Jamie's flat tonight!_ " My friend and fellow law student Maria babbled, sounding rather excited. " _Please say you can come this time! Everyone's expecting you to show up! It's at half past seven in case you were wondering._ "

"Maria, I've already told you before, I'm too busy with college work." I replied as I slowly walked into the living room, where Kitty was just about to lie down across the three-seater sofa, an open graphic novel of some sort in her hand.

" _Oh come on, you always say that. You just gotta take a break at some point. If you don't stop then you'll overwork yourself and possibly even get sick!_ "

"I'm perfectly fine, though. I'm not that interested in parties anyway. Wait, did you say that I'm expected to be there?"

" _You have to be! Seriously Emma, it's like you don't know how to have fun anymore. Ever since that breakup with what's-his-name, you've just been so focussed on studying and achieving. Where's the girl I knew all those years ago?_ "

I sighed and looked around the room, not too sure what to say next. My gaze stopped on Kitty, who was looking at me with pleading eyes.

"Not gonna work, Kit." I told her, shaking my head.

" _See? See? Even Kitty agrees. Just… please, Emma. Please take this chance._ "

 _Please take this chance._ Those four words stuck in my head as I stared out the window opposite me. Before I could say anything, Maria hung up. Walking out and putting the phone back on the table, I started up the stairs, but stopped when Kitty called out to me.

"When did you get that… big assignment?" She asked.

"Today? Why?" It wasn't _that_ bad, really. I'd have it done in two weeks' time if I kept up that pace.

"Oh my gosh, seriously? Just because you got it today doesn't mean you get started on it as soon as you get home. Like, I got a project for world history today, and I've got over a month to finish it!"

"Aren't you going to get _some_ of it done today?"

"Well… I'll make a start, but not stay cooped up in my room and do two pages of research in four hours. That's totally _nuts_. Plus, I do want to finish around the same time as everyone else in my class. Which is normally like two to three days before the due date."

"Okay, fine." I continued going up the stairs, sighing. Kitty just _had_ to try and talk me out of studying for the day. Like it was gonna happen.

"Emma, honey, you should take advantage of this party." My mother called from the kitchen.

I turned around and jogged back down, stopping in front of the kitchen entrance. A strong smell of rice noodles floated around, and went straight up my nose. I loved rice noodles.

"I know, but I want to get this assignment done as soon as possible." I said, walking into the kitchen where my mom was busy stirring a large pot.

"It's an amazing opportunity to enjoy yourself and be around all your college friends. I'm sure they'll be overjoyed to see you there."

"Yeah, and-" I paused when I heard slight movement in the hallway. "Uh, excuse me." I slowly backed out and turned to face Kitty kneeling on the floor, pulling the soppiest puppy dog eyes I had ever seen.

"Emma, pleeeeaaase…" She said quietly. "Go to the paaartyyy…" It sounded so weird and hilarious that I couldn't help but laugh, falling onto my own knees at the same time.

"Okay, you can stop now." I managed to say, rolling my eyes. "But if you're trying to convince me to go to this party, then it isn't going to work."

Of course, Kitty wasn't finished yet. "But _Emma_! It's... possibly your only chance to have a night off!" She whined.

"Emma, I know that you've been influenced to get as higher grades as possible," my mother continued, walking out of the kitchen, "but taking a break is probably going to be one of the best things that happened to you."

"And I don't wanna see my big sis all sick and stressed!" Kitty put in. "Or you'll... uh, I won't say that, actually."

I was outnumbered and out of words. I knew what Kitty meant. And she'd really hammered it in.

My dad... a very successful businessman. He took his own life barely days after I started at high school – he was unable to cope with the stress. Just like me, he was an _extremely_ hard worker, but always took on too much work at once.

I glanced between my mom and Kitty, both looking at me with pleading eyes. Damn it, they were _good_ at persuasion.

"Alright, you've got me." I eventually said with a sigh. "I'll... go to this party..."

Right at that second, Kitty literally leapt onto me, wrapping her arms around my neck in a massive hug.

"OH MY GOSH, EMMA!" She squealed. "Yes! Yes! YES!"

"Okay, okay, you can let go of me now." I laughed, trying to push her off.

Kitty climbed off, allowing me to get up, only to be pulled into _another_ hug, this time with my mom.

"I'm so happy for you, darling!" She said. "A party to go to is exactly what you need right now."

"You... think so?" I exclaimed as I pulled away. _Did_ I need one of those that bad or something?

"Of course! Well, anything from a party to just a day out with friends – they'd all start thinking that you don't want to hang out with them anymore."

"Mom, don't say that! If anything, _they're_ the ones always trying to get me out of the house."

"Oh, of course. Anyway, I should carry on with making dinner – Kitty's got a couple of friends coming over for a movie night, and they're both due in about three quarters of an hour."

Wow. Perfect timing. Thanks, Kit.

I ran upstairs and straight into my room, my eyes momentarily stopping on my textbook, still open and lying on my desk.

"No, you're going to a party." I told myself, walking over and closing it. "You've already agreed to it, so there's no going back now."

I'm going to a party. Seemed surreal.

Instead of my normal to-do list for college and household chores, I decided to do a new one for the party. Well, more of a mental copy, but it's still a list. At the top of that list though, is to call Maria. Or should I wait? I knew she'd probably show up outside the house anyway to try and talk me into going again. So another option would be to surprise her.

Deciding to go with the second choice, I went over to my drawers and pulled the first of the three larger ones open.

"Okay, what's useful in here…" I muttered, rifling through the various tops, t-shirts and sweaters that were in there.

Something then suddenly caught my eye, and I pulled out a sequinned purple tube top. I guessed that it would be party-worthy. It wasn't like I was planning to really dress up for the party. If it's going to be at a flat then not that many people should be showing up anyway.

Now what else?

I admit it, I'm no expert when it comes to fashion. Never was, and probably never will be. Kitty, however... yeah.

"Kitty, can you help me?" I called.

A few seconds later, Kitty ran in, still in the middle of getting changed out of her uniform – she had on a pink Hello Kitty top (I know, crazy, right?) but was still wearing her grey pleated skirt and white socks.

"Oh, you don't know what to wear?" She questioned.

"Well... I've got this top," I held up the purple top, "but that's all so far. I just don't have anything,"

"Emma, that could go _really_ well with your dark blue jeans! Ooh, and those sparkly sandals you bought last week totally work with it!"

"Okay..." I pulled out the draw below and grabbed my jeans, which were at the very top. "And my new sandals?"

"Yeah! You haven't lost them, right?"

"No, no, I just... I don't know." I shrugged before placing what I had gathered so far on my bed. "They're probably still in the shoebox at the very front of my closet."

"Still in the shoebox?" Kitty echoed. "How's that possible?"

"Well there's been no family events recently, and both our birthdays aren't for a long time yet, so that's how."

"Oh, okay!" Kitty smiled before ducking back out and down the hallway.

I stared blankly at my clothes for a few seconds before a thought suddenly struck me.

Spare outfit?

Yes, definitely. Especially if I ended up sleeping over. Although it was unlikely, anything could happen.

Pulling a pair of black track pants and a simple grey t-shirt from my drawers, I threw them onto my pillow and went over to my closet, quickly glancing at the clock on the wall.

Half past four. Still a few until the party started. For the first time in forever, I had a feeling that this was going to be a long time.

Exactly two hours and thirty minutes later, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, wearing the very outfit I had (sort of) planned for the night, including a large bag with any necessities for the morning after. Having borrowed some of Kitty's make-up to at least make myself look like I made an effort in getting ready, and with a wide black headband holding back my hair, an almost unrecognisable person stared back at me.

"EMMA! PHONE!" Kitty suddenly yelled from downstairs.

This should be Maria, if anyone.

I ran out of the bathroom and down the stairs, spotting Kitty standing by the living room with the phone in her hand. She passed it to me and I hesitantly put it to my ear.

" _Emma, you HAVE to come to this freaking party!_ " Maria said frantically. " _I'm like five minutes away from your house!"_

Quickly looking around, I winked at Kitty as she went back into the living room before replying, the all too familiar tune of the Universal Pictures opening playing. Most probably coming from the TV.

"Maria, I don't know how many times I have to tell you, I'm not going!"

" _But… come on! I'm providing you with an amazing opportunity, and you're turning it down? You do know that I'll still come knocking on the door, right? And what's that sound?_ "

"Yes, I know that. And Kitty's got Layla and Candy over for a movie night. I don't know what they've just put on though."

"Pitch Perfect!" Kitty called from the living room.

"There we go, Pitch Perfect."

" _Okay, that's cool, but I'm right outside your house now. Come out._ "

"Oh… fine. I'm coming out. But don't expect me to say yes to anything that relates to the party."

" _Wait, what_?"

I hung up, laughing and shaking my head as I put the phone back on its stand.

"Emma, did you just totally trick Maria into thinking you're still not going?" Kitty asked, sounding amused.

"You bet I did." I replied, walking into the living room.

"Oh my god, that's hilarious!" Layla giggled, her ginger curls bouncing as she rocked back and forth on the sofa.

"Anyway, she's apparently right outside, so I've got to go now."

"Bye!" All three girls called.

"Have fun, honey!" My mom called from the washhouse

Taking a deep breath, I walked around to the front door and opened it, and you-know-who was, of course, on the other side, looking quite nice with her long, dead straight blonde hair tied up into a high ponytail.

"Now Emma, before I-" Maria began, but stopped as she saw me, nearly dropping her phone in the process.

"Uh… surprise!" I said with an awkward laugh, splaying my arms out in front

"Emma… holy… crap! I can't believe it! Y-you're going to Rhys and Jamie's party?"

"Well you can thank my mom and Kitty for that, I guess. They both talked me into it. Anyway, shouldn't we be going there and not standing here and chatting?"

"Yeah, we should. But just… wow!"

It was only a twenty minute walk to Rhys and Jamie's flat. And for nearly the whole time, Maria was going on and on and on about me finally being at a party. After a while I threatened that I would just walk back home if she didn't stop. She said nothing at all for the rest of the way. That is, until we arrived.

There were already quite a few people gathered in various places around the flat, all conversing with each other and chugging down drinks.

"HEEEEY GUYS, EMMA'S HEREEEEE!" Maria suddenly hollered, scaring the life out of me.

The one moment that I _was_ dreading – everyone else there knowing I was there.

Shane, Maria's boyfriend, ran over and lifted her off the ground in a massive bear hug, inadvertently taking me out… nearly.

"Hey babe!" He greeted, spinning her around.

"Hey!" She replied, giggling uncontrollably. "How was Milan?"

Before I got a chance to walk over to them, I was suddenly swarmed by people, all wanting to say hello and, most likely, ask me why I was here.

"Emma, you're here!"

"What's up Emma?"

"Hey Emma! Why did you decide to show up?"

"GUYS, STOP!" Maria yelled, pushing through the crowd to get to me. "Don't be so overwhelming! She's only just got here, give her time to settle in!" She grabbed my wrist and just about dragged me out of the circle, stopping when we reached the flat's main entrance.

"Thank you so much." I said with a sigh as she let go of my arm. "So what are we doing, going inside or something?"

"Definitely. Mostly everyone's outside anyway." Maria replied. "Shane's gone back in – he was in the middle of a game of billiards with Sara and Jamie. Come on!"

"Wait, _Sara_ plays billiards?" I exclaimed as I followed her in.

"Yeah, she's like one of the best players from college! She can even beat some of the guys!"

"Wow…"

"Ha, loser!" A voice shouted jokingly from a room nearby.

Maria took a sharp turn through a doorway, doing the same myself as a full-sized billiards table came into my view with several people crowded around it.

"Sara!" Maria called, waving.

Sara, who had short, shocking pink hair, turned around with a grin, walking over.

"Hey girl, what's up?" She said cheerfully, then stepping back slightly as she saw me. "Emma? What brings you here?"

"Well… first off, Maria told me the party was on, then my sister _and_ my mom tried to convince me to go." I replied. "Once I was ready to go, Maria called again, and I tricked her into thinking I was staying at home!"

"Huh, not bad! And nice one!"

"I feel so ashamed." Maria whined, yet I could tell that she was just playing up due to the smile on her face.

"Maria, you don't have to fake it, you know." I told her as she burst into giggles.

"I know, I just did it because… well, I felt like it. Hey, let's take you round to see all the others!"

For the next hour or so, I was dragged around by Maria, saying hello to several friends and meeting a few new faces too. Part of the time I carried a half-glass of champagne with me – that was all I needed in terms of drinks. By then I had decided that the night wasn't going to be as bad as I thought. I even got a chance to talk about college work with a couple of people.

But once nine o'clock came, it all went downhill.

I was seated on a couch in the living room with Maria and Nadine – her cousin – whilst watching a few guys play a car racing game of some sort. Both girls were quite drunk, as well.

"Shaaaaaneeee, where are you?" Maria slurred, getting up and staggering around the couch.

Sitting up, I looked behind to see Shane leaning against the wall, also just as drunk.

"I'm here, baby." He called in a somewhat funny voice as he pulled her close. "Wanna get it on?"

"Ooh, baby, you know how to make a girl happy."

The two started sloppily making out, then slowly backing into the hallway.

Right. Leave them to their own business then.

"Hey guys, who's up for Never Have I Ever?" Sara called from the tiny kitchen, sounding rather sober. "I brought shots!"

A horde of guys charged in from the main entrance, a couple of girls also in the mix.

"Hey, can we do new people too?" One asked, her eyes firmly locked on me.

Uh-oh. Nope. No way.

"Yeah, let's do newbies!" One of the guys cheered. "Come on Brent, you said you'd do it, right?"

"Heck yeah!" Another replied. "Been waiting to do this ever since the massive twenty-first thrown for my big sis! Hey, where's Arlene? She's just as excited as I am to do it for the first time! Jenny, can you go find her?"

"Yeah, but I think Emma should give it a try too." The girl, Jenny, said.

No, no, no, no… not me, not me.

"Hey, Emma!" Sara shouted. "Get over here!

Damn it.

"Coming!" I called, getting up and walking over to the group, all the while knowing that this would be the stupidest thing I had ever done, even if I was reluctant to do it. Well, if I _did_ end up doing it. "Do you seriously want me to do this? Because it's not really what I came here for."

"Nuh-uh, it's mandatory for first timers to the game!" Jenny replied, smirking.

"Are you kidding me? My mom is expecting me to be home safe and sober! She'd probably kill me the next morning!"

"Oh, come on, just live a little!"

Before I could reply, I was suddenly forced to the ground as Sara walked round from the kitchen, a large tray with shot glasses balanced carefully on both of her forearms.

"Okay, so we've got about… twenty to thirty shots on here." She said, carefully placing the tray merely a foot away from me. "Someone get Arlene! Oh yeah, and Thomas!"

"Got it!" Jenny ran out as Brent plummeted onto the floor, sitting cross-legged.

I looked around frantically, hoping that there was an escape out of this… mess. Why didn't I leave earlier? In fact, why did I even decide to go to this party?

"IS IT TIME FOR NEVER HAVE I EVER?" A voice suddenly yelled from some distance away, sounding very excited.

"Come on Arl, you're gonna miss out!" Sara called. "Is Thomas with you?"

"Nah, he went home early. Had a doctor's appointment at like eight thirty in the morning tomorrow or something."

Hearing footsteps coming closer, I looked up just as Arlene, a tall, stick-thin girl, burst through the small crowd and plopped on the ground next to Brent.

"So who's doing questions?" Brent asked. "And shouldn't there be another person on? Don't wanna get super drunk after all this."

Everyone looked around, daring each other to fill in. I just sat there, thinking of all the reasons why I shouldn't be taking part. But it seemed that no matter how hard I'd try to work my way out of it, there was most probably going to be someone to push me back in.

I was completely and utterly screwed.

Then a thought struck me.

"How about we just take like five away and give them to other people?" I blurted out, gasping slightly afterwards. Should I have said that or not?

"Whoa, Emma's on a roll already!" Sara remarked with a laugh. "But yeah, we should." She bent over and picked up a couple of shot glasses, handing one to someone at the back and downing the other herself. "Three more! Whoever wants one, only take _one_! Especially if you're planning to drink more than a weeny shot glass."

Three guys stepped forward, each of them bending down and taking a shot glass from the tray.

"Alright, let's get on with this! And before anyone asks, I'm a designated driver, which is why I'm still sober, and will be that way for the whole night."

I stared at the shot glasses, their contents glinting in the moonlight coming from the kitchen window. I couldn't opt out, no chance. Or was there still a way out?

No, too late.

"Okay… never have I ever…" Sara began, pausing to think. "Pulled an all-nighter on an assignment."

"Whoa, you've never pulled an all-nighter?" Brent exclaimed, reaching for a shot glass.

"Nope, I've been pretty fine with that stuff. What about you guys?"

All eyes were on me and Arlene, but she gave in and grabbed a glass from the tray, downing it in seconds.

"Just you two?" Jenny asked, sounding surprised.

"I _do_ value my sleep, if you really want to know." I said with a shrug.

Phew. First one and I didn't even have to take a shot.

"I'll do one!" A thin, wiry guy called. "Never have I ever… arrived _really_ early to a class."

"Damn it." Arlene groaned as she grabbed another. "Me again."

"Come on Emma, don't pretend you haven't!" Brent teased.

I gulped loudly. I'm in trouble.

Tentatively reaching over for a glass, I held it up to my face as everyone started chanting for me to drink it.

"You gotta drink it, Emma!" Someone yelled over the noise.

I looked up to the roof, regretting everything about tonight right at that minute, and I tipped the contents of the glass into my mouth.

Ugh, it tasted disgusting.

Chanting then changed to cheering as half of the people gathered around bombarded me with pats on the back and short hugs. And to be honest, I hated every second of it.

"Okay guys, lets' not get _too_ wound up about it!" Sara shouted, noticing my pained expression. "Pia here has one!"

Just as everyone slowly moved away, a tiny girl with jet black hair styled in a pixie cut stepped forward, looking pretty smug.

"Never have I ever… handed an assignment in at the very last minute. Right on the due date _and_ time." She said.

"Aw man, that's all three of us!" Brent complained. "Oh well…"

All of us simultaneously reached for a glass and downed them, however I was more hesitant.

The next lot of questions were mostly non-college related, though I found myself succumbing to one of them. By then, I was starting to feel funny in the head, and at the same time, didn't want to stop what I was doing for some weird reason.

Brent, who turned out to be a lightweight (as most of the others called it), was out of it right on his fifth shot. After me missing a few and him taking two of them, he passed out completely, and was dragged over to an empty couch.

Everyone was watching me, and Arlene of course, who was already giggling away. Question after question. Shot after occasional shot. I just wanted it to be all over, to wake up here or at home with most likely a hangover, and get on with life and college.

Shot number six for me came round, and that was when my memory all went to custard. The last thing I remembered was Arlene moving all her shot glasses around to make some sort of design.

 **xx**

 **And there you have it! Well, for now anyway. There's still more to come, and the next chapter's already halfway done, so expect it in about… two weeks?**

 **Until next time!**


	2. Chapter 2: Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

**Hey guys! :)**

 **Wow, I'm actually on schedule for updating something. That never happens… LOL. I guess it depends on the length of the chapter or whatnot.**

 **I do not own Total Drama, or anything involved with it. I own a few OCs here and there, but mostly they're just filler characters. This time we're gonna be seeing some of the contestants!**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 2 – Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas**

 **xx**

I woke up in what I thought was my room, and groaned, rubbing my eyes and then looking out the window – it was still dark outside. But then I noticed a few things.

One (and the most obvious thing) – my head was absolutely _pounding_.

Two – something was around my waist… a strap of some sort.

And three – the window was an odd shape. That's when I realised that I wasn't in my room, but an aeroplane. A freaking aeroplane.

So this is what I do when I'm drunk. Get accepted on a flight to somewhere and pass out in my seat. _Great_. Hopefully it was to a place not too far away.

Holding my head in pain, I turned around to the other side, and saw an empty seat next to me. Across the aisle, Arlene was still sleeping, head slumped to one side and her tray table down.

Well at least I didn't go it alone.

I leaned back in my seat, sighing as I stared into space. What exactly _had_ happened after the game of Never Have I Ever?

"Oh, hey-hey, you're awake!" A cheerful voice said, startling me out of my thoughts

"Huh?" I exclaimed, looking back to the empty seat, only this time it wasn't empty. A girl clad in green with frizzy ginger hair sat next to me, a fairly large grin on her face. "Uh… hi? Who are you?"

"Haha, silly, don't you remember?" She chuckled.

"No, I was… er, drunk."

"Oh! Well hi again! I'm Izzy! And you're Emma, right?"

"What?" How did she know my name?

"You told me last night!" Izzy laughed hysterically. "Wowzers, you must have been out to it! Izzy didn't even know that you were drunk!"

"Okay…" So Izzy talked in third person at times. Weird. "So… where are we going?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean where is the plane landing?"

A voice suddenly called out, and Izzy looked up as soon as she heard it.

"Whoops, gotta go for a bit! I'll be back!" She said, leaping out of the seat and running off.

"Wait!" I called, mustering up the strength to sit up properly, despite my aching head. Slumping back into my seat, I slowly drifted back to sleep.

Later, I woke up, now noticing that there was some early morning light streaming through the window, and an announcement was just being made – although it sounded like it was nearly finished.

"…that we are fast approaching the runway, so sit tight and do not move from your allocated seats." That was all I heard from the flight attendant who made the announcement. Not even where this plane was headed to.

I looked down, freezing as I noticed a couple more things. Firstly, my black bag was nestled right next to my feet, and secondly, I was wearing the grey top and track pants I had packed, along with some sneakers that were definitely not mine – they were massive. But at least I was smart enough to bring my bag with me. I had lost it sometime at the party, and probably found it (if not someone else did).

And as it also turned out, the drunk version of me had enough common sense to change my clothes. But not put on the right shoes… whoever they belonged to.

A slight thud echoed out, and I turned to the window, which was a seat away from me. A fairly large, long building came into my view as the plane started slowing down.

We had landed. Where at, I still had no idea.

Once the plane had come to a standstill, people started unbuckling their seatbelts as a few more short announcements were made, but had nothing to do with the location.

Bending down and picking my bag up, I undid my own seatbelt and slowly pulled myself up, just as Izzy ran back around.

"Hey Emma, we're here!" She said excitedly, grabbing a white backpack and swinging it over her shoulder.

"We're where?" I asked.

"Las Vegas, silly!"

"Wait, _what_?" Las Vegas? How did I manage to worm my way onto a flight to the other side of the continent? "Are you serious? I don't even have my passport with me!"

"I dunno. I might be. And yeah you do! Izzy saw you pull it out from the very bottom of your bag!"

Wow. So I _did_ have my passport with me. That was lucky.

"Oh, it was probably still in there from when I went to New York last summer with my mom and sister."

"You went to New York?" Izzy echoed. "Awesome! Hey, I got some friends who came here with me! Wanna go meet them?"

"Um… where are they though?"

"I saw them go past us when we were talking! Come on!"

Before I could react, I was dragged out into the aisle, which had a few less people on it, as mostly everyone had gotten off the plane.

"Emma, you're here too?" A voice exclaimed from behind me. "Like what even happened?"

I quickly looked over my shoulder to see a very confused and rather scruffy Arlene standing behind me, pink handbag over her shoulder and still in her black dress from the party.

"I have no idea!" I replied, shaking my head. "Oh, and whose are these?" I shook my feet in the too-big shoes.

"Oh, those are… they belong to Shane."

"Shane? Did I… walk in on him and Maria or something?" Damn it if I had – that would have been terribly awkward.

"Maybe? I can't remember. Dammit, my head… the things I'd do for some antacid tablets right now."

I sighed and turned my head back to the front as we approached the exit. I thanked the air hostess (hey, it still payed to be nice, even though I wasn't supposed to be on that flight) as I walked out and onto the indoor ramp… or whatever they're called. I saw Izzy waiting further ahead, still by herself.

"Hey, who's that you got?" She called, noticing Arlene behind me.

"Oh yeah, I apparently met Izzy here while I was drunk." I informed her. "Met her again just earlier because obviously I couldn't remember." I then called out to Izzy. "Her name's Arlene! She came with me last night!"

"Coolios!" Izzy grinned before looking ahead, noticing something. "Hey Owen, Noah! There you guys are!" She cheered, running off.

Whoever Owen and Noah were, I guessed that they were her friends she was talking about earlier.

Just as I rounded the corner, a sudden thundering of steps reached my ears, yet strangely enough, it only sounded like one pair of feet. Before I knew it, Arlene and I were both scooped up by a massive blond guy, who gave us practically bone-crushing bear hugs.

"Hey guys!" He said with a laugh. "Man, I love meeting new people! WOO!"

"Owen, they can't breathe!" Another voice called from some distance away.

I couldn't see anyone, but the person must have noticed Arlene's face slowly turning purple.

"Whoops, sorry…" Owen put us down and stepped back slowly.

"Hey again!" Izzy said sunnily, walking around from behind. "This is Owen, and over there is Noah!" She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

Side-stepping slightly, I looked ahead, spotting an Indian guy leaning against the wall, looking like he wanted to leave the place already. That I could relate to, I guess.

"He sure isn't happy about being here…" Arlene remarked.

"Oh yeah, he doesn't even wanna be here!" Izzy turned to face me. "You do, right?"

"Um, not really?" I replied. "I'd rather be home. My mom and sister are probably worried sick right now!"

"And my parents are gonna be sending me _tons_ of messages to find out where I went off to!" Arlene put in. "Now that I think about it, I wonder if they tried to call me."

Crap. Thanks, Arlene.

Slinging my bag off and placing it on the ground, I opened the front pocket and rummaged through it, eventually finding my phone. Yanking it out, I quickly unlocked it and went straight to my messages.

There were two from Maria, one from an unknown number, and… five from Kitty. I checked Maria's, the first of them sent at half past six in the morning… crap, what's the time here?

 _Ok, I have no idea what happened last night, but apparently you and Arlene stumbled off to the airport. Oh, and you've also got Shane's shoes…?_

Interesting. I scrolled down to the second message, which was short, sweet and in capitals… sent thirty minutes ago.

 _I'M PREGNANT WHAT THE FUCK?_

Oh dear… guess they didn't use protection. I exited out of it and tapped on the unknown number, sent at two in the morning.

 _Oh god, where the heck did you and Arlene go off to? Please tell me it's at least in somewhere like Quebec or Manitoba! And you nearly walked in on Shane and Maria earlier… -Sara_

Damn it. That would have been close. I quickly typed out a reply.

 _Sara, I'm not even in Canada. It's horrible. I have no memory of late last night! The most recent thing I can recall is Arlene playing with her shot glasses. And before you ask, I'm in Las Vegas._

Now onto Kitty's train of messages. I read all five of them, one after the other.

 _Hey Emma, I'm just going to bed now. How's the party going?_ Sent at half past ten last night.

 _Emma, did you end up sleeping over? You're not in bed is all…_ Seven o'clock this morning.

 _Candy just got a call from Maria. She told her that you're not even at Rhys and Jamie's flat…_ Quarter past seven.

 _Emma, where are you? Mom's worried sick that you haven't come back yet!_ Eight o'clock.

 _YOU WENT TO THE AIRPORT? WHAT?_ Sent five minutes ago.

I sighed, just staring at my phone. How was I going to tell her where I am?

"Emma, you alright?" Arlene asked, walking over.

"I… don't know." I replied, shaking my head and looking up. "But in short, Sara asked me if I was in Manitoba or Quebec, Kitty asked me… a lot of things, and Maria's… pregnant. And I'm wearing Shane's shoes, as you already know."

"Wait, Maria's pregnant? Really?"

The two of us stood in silence, not sure what to say or do next.

"Uh… you wanna get out of here first?" Owen asked. "The airport, I mean."

"Yeah, Izzy wants to go out there and see Las Vegas!" Izzy added with a cackle.

I looked at Arlene, and she looked back at me. We both seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"I guess we should…" She said with a shrug. "Waiting here and doing nothing's not gonna get us back to Ottawa."

"Wait, you're from Ottawa?" Izzy exclaimed. "Me too!"

Well that was good to know, I guess. My phone suddenly beeped, and I turned back to it – Sara had replied.

 _LAS VEGAS?_ _HOLY CRAP! How did you manage to get over there with no passport?_

Right as I was about to reply, my phone beeped again and the screen went blank. Damn it. Flat battery. _Great_ time for it to happen.

"Okay, are we going anywhere or what?" Noah called from where he was standing. "I'd like to be in a hotel room right now with a book."

"Yeah, we gotta go." Owen replied, turning around and running off. "Woohoo, Las Vegas!"

"Hey, wait for me!" Izzy shouted, performing a cartwheel and skipping after him. "Come on Noah, don't be a lazybones!"

Not knowing what else to do, I just followed them, Arlene soon joining me as we trailed behind Noah, who seemed to be almost purposefully taking his time in getting from A to B.

After somehow successfully going through customs and collecting a few bags, we were waiting outside the terminal, apparently for a shuttle.

"Arl!" A voice suddenly shouted. "Babe, when did you get here?"

I looked up as Arlene leapt up and half ran, half stumbled away, clutching her head the whole time. She kept going further and further until she fell into the arms of a tall, dark-skinned guy – I guessed this guy was her boyfriend or something. What a coincidence for those two to be in the same place at the same time.

"Hey, there's the shuttle!" Izzy shouted.

Diverting my attention, I looked out to the road as a white and grey shuttle pulled up, the driver getting out and going around to open the door. Several Asian tourists carefully climbed down, all thanking the driver as they went. As soon as they moved off, Izzy ran straight for the open door, swinging herself in.

"Come on guys!" She called, letting out a loud whoop.

I looked over to where Arlene was… but she was gone, and so was the other guy.

Guess I'm stuck here then.

I got up and walked over to the open door, climbing on and taking one of the seats at the back of the shuttle. I looked out the back window as I did up my seatbelt, noticing the driver placing the bags in the small trailer, and then slamming it shut.

Oh, the things I'd do to be back at home right now, carrying on with my college assignment and recovering from the night before. On the downside, I'd probably have Maria on the phone yelling and crying because she wouldn't know what to do now that she was pregnant. And as for her and Shane, I had no idea what would happen there next.

The shuttle driving off snapped me out of my thoughts, and I leaned back in the seat, my head still pounding. Ugh, what an absolutely _brilliant_ start to the day.

"So Emma, where in Ottawa do ya come from?" Izzy called from the front row. "I live in the Golden Triangle!"

"Golden Triangle?" I exclaimed.

"Yep-yep!"

"Wow… I'm from New Edinburgh!" Unbelievable about how close we were in terms of home suburbs.

"Oh, awesome, you're practically just across the river! Huh, actually… Izzy's seen you round town. A few times!"

"Okay then… that's a bit… weird."

"Yeah, Izzy's a weird person." Noah put in from the seat in front. "Wait until we get to the hotel. She'll be gone as soon as we check in."

I don't know what happened from there, but I ended up falling asleep right at that second, and woke up to Izzy roughly shaking me, the shuttle now stationary.

"Wake up Emma, we're here!" She nearly shouted.

Rubbing my eyes, I slowly pulled myself up and peered through the window, noticing a large building standing right there.

Of course. The hotel.

"Oh… we're here. Okay then." I stood up as Izzy leapt backwards out onto the tar seal, then running around the shuttle.

As I got out, a camera suddenly appeared from… what seemed like nowhere, and flashed, taking a picture of me.

"What the… there's photos involved with this too?" This could not be happening.

"Uh-huh!" A voice replied.

I looked to where the voice came from, and saw a fairly tall girl with magenta dyed hair in a long braid down her back standing before me, a pretty high tech camera clutched in her hand.

"Oh, oh, hey Sierra!" Izzy called. "Good to see you!"

"Oh em gee, Izzy? I totally didn't see you!" The girl ran round to the pavement, her hair flying out behind.

Well, met four new people in the space of a couple of hours. And I had a feeling there was going to be more coming. A lot more.

"Emma, you still there?" Izzy called from behind the shuttle.

"Yeah, coming." I called back, slowly walking round. Now I understand how hard it is to walk around town with a hangover.

The next little while was… fairly uneventful. The camera girl, Sierra, told me all about her current hometown – Halifax, as well as asking me why I wanted to come to Las Vegas. Of course, I didn't exactly _want_ to, but unfortunately it ended up happening. And just like Noah said, Izzy was gone within minutes of entering the hotel, which I eventually learned was called the Downtown Grand Las Vegas. Not a bad name for a hotel, I had to admit – it was pretty high-class. And massive, as well.

Fortunately, even after losing Izzy, I still managed to get up to the hotel room. Well… rooms, really, as there were two booked for them, with two queen sized beds in each. But there was an open suitcase in both rooms – the guys had already decided to be separated.

I stood in the hallway, looking between the two, which were adjacent to each other. Which one would be better than the other?

I eventually gave in and went into the one on my left, flopping onto the closest bed as soon as I entered, letting my black bag slide off my shoulder and onto the ground. Damn it, I was still tired.

I ended up falling asleep (again), then waking up some time later. The sun was a bit brighter, and someone else was in the room, yet I had no idea who it was, and had no intention to find out. I didn't even want to move. I remained stomach-down, my head turned to the side so it faced the open door.

Suddenly, slight shuffling reached my ears, just as the other person walked round into my view – Noah, to be specific. But I didn't say anything, in case he thought I was still asleep. He stopped at the doorway and sniffed the air, groaning loudly afterwards.

"Owen, did you fart _again_?" He called out to the hallway.

"Heheh… sorry!" I heard Owen call back in reply.

Something told me that I had made a good room choice, if Owen apparently farted a lot. I couldn't even imagine sleeping in a room full of that kind of gas – it would be an absolute nightmare. I don't think anyone would even be able to breathe, let alone sleep.

Just as my eyes were slowly starting to fall shut…

"Oh. You're awake."

…They snapped open again. I lifted my head up and looked at Noah, who was looking over his shoulder. At the same time, an absolutely _disgusting_ smell reached my nose, so bad I had to block it.

"What's that smell?" I asked, using my free hand to pull myself up to a sitting position.

"The result of Owen letting rip." Noah bluntly replied, rolling his eyes. "Only problem is that it's normal."

"Oh… well that's great then." I said with a sardonic laugh.

"Hey guys, we should go down and find some breakfast!" Izzy suddenly shouted from some distance away.

I was actually not very surprised that she came back – yet her main reason for disappearing was to probably have a good walk around a large part of the hotel (possibly even the entire complex), if she was gone for that long. Unless she finished her tour while I was still sleeping.

"Oh boy, breakfast!" Owen laughed, thundering past. "Man I'm _hungry_."

"Yeah, you always are." Noah said as he slowly walked out.

At that point I noticed that I needed food as well – and sitting on this bed doing nothing wasn't really going to get me anywhere. So I got up and joined the three outside, who were quite a distance apart from each other. Noah was just walking along the side, Owen was running and slowing down and running and so on, whilst Izzy was… out of sight.

Once we got to the massive dining hall, they were all saying hello to heaps of people, who all looked roughly the same age. I just stood off to the side, not really wanting to be absorbed in all the action this time. Especially with a hangover.

"Emma, why are you just standing there?" Izzy called from somewhere nearby. "Come on and meet some people!"

I was about to call back in reply when a hand tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to see a fairly tall, tanned male with greenish-blue eyes.

"I do apologise, but I think I've seen you before?" He said in a questioning tone, smiling.

I looked at him for a few seconds before realising that I sort of recognised him – I'd seen him around too.

"Yeah, I think I've seen you from somewhere too." I replied, crossing my arms. "You live… a couple of streets away or something, right?"

"Well… I used to, but I moved into a new apartment in the central city just last week."

"Alejandro! What are you _doing_?" A voice shouted from not far away. A female voice, to be exact.

I stepped back slightly, just as an Asian girl with waist-length raven black hair stomped over, looking _pretty_ annoyed.

"I'll just… go now." I said, turning around and walking off, only for Izzy to suddenly leap in front of me and grab my hand.

"C'mon, don't be shy!" She laughed, pulling me towards a large, circular table, where several unfamiliar people were already seated at. "Guys, this is Emma! I met her last night!" She just about forced me over to a seat and, having no choice, I sat down on it. "Emma, these are some of my old high school classmates!"

Oh, high school reunion. No wonder she knew almost everyone in the room.

"Alright, I'm gonna just go and find Noah! He's just being his normal lazy self, _not_ joining in on the fun. Be back in a few!" Izzy bounded off, dodging around a couple of tables along the way.

I sighed and turned to face the other people at the table, who were all looking at me. How awkward.

The closest to my right was a blond, blue-eyed guy with a cowboy hat, who had his arm around the girl next to him, who had the same hair colour, yet she had green eyes and had a blue hoodie on. To my left, there were two other people, sitting a seat apart. One was a girl with pale skin and hair that was dyed teal and black, and the other… well, he looked like he'd just come out of prison or something. Green mohawk, multiple piercings – he even had a unibrow. Another thing I noticed – those two seemed to be avoiding looking at each other. Something was definitely up there… maybe old drama from school.

I had to explain myself first though. What was _I_ doing here?

"Uh, don't mind me, I was… er, drunk last night." I said, waving my hand dismissively. I was pretty sure that I probably looked like I'd pulled an all-nighter on something.

"Whoa, you're a partier?" The blond guy exclaimed, sitting up. "Oh man, that's awesome!"

"No, no, I'm not. I got… talked into it. It was my first one, actually…"

The guy's jaw dropped open in surprise, looking like someone had just slapped him in his face.

"You've… never been to a party before that?" He managed to say.

"Even I find that surprising." The mohawk guy remarked, looking slightly shocked himself. "You from around here or something?"

"Um… no? You see, that's… kind of the problem. I'm actually from Ottawa." I couldn't believe I was saying all this to a bunch of strangers. But then again, they all wanted to know, I guess.

"Damn. Ottawa?"

"I know, it's crazy. But somehow, I ended up on a flight to Las Vegas, _with_ my passport, which was lucky. Oh, and I arrived here with another girl, but she bumped into a guy who I think was her boyfriend, and I haven't seen her since."

For the next few minutes, I found myself telling everything that I could remember from last night to these people, who did also introduce themselves. The blond guy, Geoff, seemed to like my story, and laughed a little at times, while Bridgette, the other blonde, was a bit more sympathetic, yet she had a bit of a giggle as well. As for the other two, they weren't as interested, but still listened in on it. The mohawk guy, whose name was Duncan, didn't really do much, and neither did the other girl – Gwen.

After a while, Izzy eventually showed up with Noah in tow, right when I had finished talking.

"Hey guys, _finally_ got old lazybones out of his book!" She said sunnily, just about dumping him in the chair next to me. "Emma, you hungry?"

"Starving, actually." I replied, getting up.

"Okay, come on!" Izzy ran off to what looked to be a massive buffet table. Not knowing what else to do, I followed her.

As soon as I reached the table, I grabbed a bowl and scooped up a bit of muesli with a serving spoon, putting it in the bowl, as well as some yogurt and a pretty large helping of fruit salad – I'd never really been this hungry before, so it was surprising to see my almost overflowing bowl of food.

"Hey, are you sure you're gonna be able to eat all that?" A voice asked from behind me.

"Ah!" I nearly dropped the bowl in fright, only just holding onto it right as the fruit salad was about to fall out. I turned to the person who'd asked me the question – it was Owen.

"Oh, did you nearly spill that?" He looked down in shame. "Sorry…" Turning around, he shuffled off to the other end of the buffet table.

I let out a sigh and stood up straight again. Guess that wasn't supposed to happen… or something. Looking around, I spotted Izzy walking towards me, and turned to face her.

"What… just happened there?" I asked, although I didn't know if Izzy would have the answer.

"Nothing, just Owen being… well, himself." She replied with a laugh. "He eats a _lot_."

"Okay then, I guess that's… good to know. Oh, and… uh, is there anyone else you want me to meet?"

"Hm… nope, not yet! Izzy's only seen those guys so far!" Izzy pointed over to where the others were. "Don't worry, there's still heaps more to find!"

I grabbed a spoon from the cutlery basket and walked back to the table, taking the seat that I was in just earlier.

After what happened so far this morning, I had no idea how I was ever going to get back home. And with my phone being flat as well… my mom and Kitty will be just about reporting my disappearance to the police now.

Speaking of my phone, I'd have to charge it when I get back to the room. Now, if either Izzy, Noah or Owen had a charger that would fit it…

 **xx**

 **So… to recap, Emma's found herself en route to Las Vegas, met a few people, and is probably gonna be ending up staying there for the whole weekend.**

 **Speaking of which, this fic will take place over a period of two days, so apologies to anyone who thought it was a bit too slow-paced. Quite a lot** _ **can**_ **happen in a day, I guess.**

 **Until next time!**


	3. Chapter 3: Here, There, Somewhere?

**Hey guys!**

 **Geez, so sorry this was late :( I lost just over a page and a half's worth of writing this morning, so I had to redo that whole part.**

 **Anyway, in this chapter, it's mostly in Las Vegas, but then it goes back in time to Ottawa later on, in Kitty's POV. Hope that clears things up a bit.**

 **I don't own Total Drama or Ridonculous Race. I own any OCs mentioned, but they are just filler characters.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 3 – Here, There, Somewhere?**

 **xx**

If feeling satisfied yet somewhat bloated counted as a reason to enjoy a meal, then that would be me right now.

I managed to finish the whole bowl, and was still hungry after that, so I just went and put a piece of toast in one of the many toasting machines that were there. I had it with butter, and then went straight back up to the hotel room, feeling a lot better than I was earlier on, save my head, which was still aching.

I sat on the bed and looked out the window, not sure what to do next. In a few minutes, Izzy would probably come running in and say that she was looking for me. But so far, I could just be here in peace. Well, for now.

Sighing, I glanced at the clock on the nightstand – quarter to nine, it read. I'd have to change the time on my phone once I finally get it all charged up.

The dinging of an elevator reached my ears, along with the doors opening and someone walking out. By the sound of their fairly soft footsteps, I could tell it wasn't someone like Owen.

A thought suddenly came to me, and I looked down at the bed. When we were checking in, I wasn't questioned for my presence, nor was I asked if I wanted a room.

"I wonder why that happened…" I said quietly.

"Wonder why what happened?" A familiar voice repeated.

"Uh…" I looked over to the doorway as Noah strolled in, going straight round to the other bed. "I guess I have a question… how did I get checked in without being kicked out?"

"Oh. That's because there was someone else coming with us, but she cancelled at the last minute for… what seemed to be no reason at all." He replied, shrugging. "She's got anger management issues, so it'll possibly be to do with that."

"Okay… that's interesting, I guess."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I found myself staring out the window again. Although being on one of the middle floors of the building, there was still a relatively good view of the city. Well, a good view of what could be seen of it.

Then, in a complete out of the blue moment, I remembered something important, and probably pretty embarrassing. I pulled my legs closer and kicked off Shane's shoes, which were done up fairly tight, even though both my feet felt tiny in them.

"I take it that those aren't yours?" Noah asked.

"The shoes? No, they belong to my friend's boyfriend." I replied. "Did you notice them before or something?"

"Meh, didn't say anything until now."

"Right." I turned back to the window, not too sure of what to say or do next.

The elevator doors opened again, and I didn't even need to guess who it was as a loud whoop reached my ears.

"Woo! Izzy loves this place!"

Just like I expected, Izzy ran past outside, then presumably going into the room next door.

"Hey guys, what should we do?" She called out as the elevator opened again. "No point sitting round and doing nothing!"

"Oh, what about looking around the city?" Owen suggested, ambling past.

"Can we do that at a time where I'm free to do nothing but read?" Noah asked.

"And can I get myself back home first?" I added, deciding to join in on the conversation.

"Nuh-uh! Izzy's gotta see the city, and you're all coming too!"

"Anyone want a round of cards?" A voice asked from somewhere down the hallway. "It's just that we need one more player."

Well, cards wasn't exactly on my list of things to do – I couldn't really think that much with an aching head.

"Izzy's game!" Izzy called as I heard her running past. "What're we playing? Euchre?"

Euchre. Now there's a card game I knew pretty well. Even most of the different variations, although I have admitted to several people, I've yet to learn 500. I'd just… never taken the opportunity to join a card game club at college, because I was always busy… why _didn't_ I just go and do it anyway?

A zipping sound snapped me back to reality, and I looked over to see Noah unzipping a top pocket of his suitcase, then pulling out a couple of books. That's when I realized that I needed something to do – I couldn't just sit here.

Suddenly, voices came from some distance away, mostly male, and at the same time, a door opened. I looked around to the door, just as a cameraman walked past, followed by a guy with a boom mic. Whatever was happening, I had no idea.

The answer then came as another guy spoke up (whom I couldn't see).

"Will the pizza restaurant live up to its reputation?" He asked. "Will I get out of here while I'm still young?"

Feeling curious, I got up and poked my head out of the door, just as a black-haired guy in his mid-thirties strode past. I slowly shifted my gaze to suddenly look at the door opposite, and noticed a cameraman standing _right there_. Gasping, I ducked back inside and just about fell back onto the bed. That was definitely not happening again. Now I'm probably on live TV for everyone to see.

Hold on… live TV… if Kitty decides to watch TV later at home, she could see that. The guy rang a bell, too. Something looked really familiar about him.

"I've got an answer to his second question." Noah suddenly said.

"You do?" I asked, swinging my legs round to the other side. "Go ahead, I guess."

"I dunno, are we in the seventies?"

I couldn't help but laugh – that was hilarious. I lay down on my back, just looking up at the roof and laughing.

"That's… that's a good one." I managed to say. "Oh, and who's he again? I can't quite remember."

"Oh, that's Chris McLean. Certified jerk." Noah replied with a roll of his eyes. "Had him as a teacher once. Enjoyed every minute of it."

"You- oh…" I stopped myself before I continued, finally realizing what he meant. "I take it that was meant to be sarcastic?"

"Yep."

"Okay then… oh, just remembered this now, but… do you have a charger for Android phones? My phone's flat is all…?"

"Uh… I think I do."

"Hey guys, you should join us!" Izzy shouted from down the hallway. "We need another person!"

"Man, I'd love me a card game!" Owen said with a chuckle as he thudded past, but then stopping and looking round to the doorway. "Unless you guys are up for cards…?"

"Um…" I looked over at Noah, who was already searching through his suitcase, presumably for a charger. "No thanks, I guess."

"Aw, okay…" Owen shuffled off, looking slightly disappointed. "Let us know if you change your mind."

I sighed and stared up at the roof, wondering whatever else I could do to kill some time that didn't involve doing much. Surely there should be something…

Something then landed on the floor, and I looked to see a plain black charger cord lying a few feet away from me.

"Is… that it?" I asked, reaching over to pick it up.

"Yep." Noah replied simply.

I rolled onto my left side and grabbed my phone from the nightstand, then going to plug the cord into it. But I noticed a problem – the end that plugs into the phone looked about the right size for my phone. That is, if you count out the fact that it was slightly bigger.

"I don't think it's the right one." I said, sitting up. "It's too big."

"Too big?" Noah repeated, sounding confused. "Must have been a charger for something else. Most of the cords I have are black, so I… probably grabbed the wrong one."

"Oh, right then. That's okay, I guess. I'll just probably have to go out and buy one from a store somewhere."

Speaking of which – I'd need my wallet if I was going to buy a new charger for my phone. And I had no idea if I brought it with me or not. If not, it probably had fallen out at the party. I got up and walked around to where my bag was resting against the wall, and started rummaging through it, almost immediately grasping onto a slim, leathery item.

Phew. I had my wallet.

I pulled my hand back out and zipped the pocket up, then going back to the bed and sitting down on it.

Suddenly, I noticed that just sitting there, doing nothing – it was a very weird feeling. With no assignment to work on, I almost felt like I… pretty much _needed_ something to do that would keep me busy.

What was I to do?

Well… I could try and have another sleep, but I was feeling a bit more wide awake due to breakfast. I could also ask to borrow one of Noah's books – that is, if they were interesting, I guess. Or, I could go for a walk around the hotel and see where everything is.

A walk around the hotel? Why not?

I looked over at Noah, opening my mouth to speak, but stopped myself as I saw him busy reading a book. I didn't know whether he was well absorbed into whatever he was reading or not, so I shut my mouth and decided not to say anything. Turning back round, I got up again and slowly walked over to the door.

Although I felt somewhat pleased that I'd found something to do, I wasn't sure on how it was going to go – my head was still aching, although not as bad as earlier on, and I probably still looked like a complete mess. But just sitting there on the bed was an excellent way for the time to go past slowly.

Soon enough, I was in the elevator, which was headed to the pool deck – whatever that was. A deck with a pool planted in the middle of it?

The elevator doors then opened, and I walked out to see what almost looked like a paradise. As it turned out, this was a rooftop pool, with deckchairs and loungers scattered all around it. The place was fairly empty as well, apart from a small cluster of girls sitting with their feet dangling in the pool. Two of them I could recognize – Bridgette and Gwen, yet there was also a tanned brunette who didn't exactly look that familiar, as well as a dark-skinned girl who had… uh, quite a bit in the breast and bottom departments.

Suddenly, I was pushed to the side as a girl walked past – the same girl that had stomped over to the Alejandro guy earlier on. Now that was one way to really get on my nerves. I reacted fast and grabbed her wrist, yanking her backwards to face me.

"And what exactly was _that_ for?" I demanded, glaring at her.

"Ugh, let me go!" The girl retorted, trying to pull her wrist back while returning the glare – I only maintained my grip.

"Do you have a problem with me taking in the scenery of this place or something? I'm sure you would have done the same."

"Just… whatever."

Right at that moment, I decided to let go, which to my surprise, sent her stumbling to the ground.

"If you're thinking about giving someone you barely know a hard time, then you've probably taken a wrong turn." I said calmly but firmly, crossing my arms.

"What… what is your problem?" The girl exclaimed, still looking annoyed.

"I think that you're the one with the problem here. That attitude won't get you any friends – if you have friends."

I heard a loud whoop come from behind me, and looked over my shoulder to see the four girls by the pool standing up and cheering.

"You tell her!" Bridgette shouted, laughing.

Looking back down at the girl, whose mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish, I turned round and walked over to the pool, feeling somewhat accomplished.

First time in Las Vegas – I barely even knew that girl and I'd already managed to put her in her place. Not bad.

"Girl, that was just _amazing_!" The dark skinned girl exclaimed, walking over. "Wait, aren't you the girl who came here with Izzy and all that?"

"Uh… yeah, I guess I did." I replied, not too sure what to say. "It's a really long story but-"

"Oh, don't worry about rattling through that again, I already know. But damn, you went from Ottawa and managed to get all the way to here?"

"How are you holding up though?" The brunette girl spoke up, sitting back down by the water's edge.

"Well, I guess you could say I'm pretty alright. I've still got a headache, but that's slowly going away, so I'm feeling a lot better than I was this morning."

"That's good then! Oh, I'm Courtney, and that's Leshawna." She pointed over to the dark skinned girl.

"Hey-hey, what's happening out here?" An all too familiar voice called.

I looked over to where I had come from, only to see that the other girl was gone, and Izzy was now there.

"Ooh, lemme tell ya that this girl just totally _owned_ Heather!" Leshawna replied with a laugh, gesturing to me. "Skank deserved it too!"

So Heather was her name. Couldn't say I'd heard that name around anywhere.

"Oh, that's so _awesome_! Way to go Emma!" Izzy cheered, running over. "Not so bad here now, huh?"

"Er… guess not." I replied, feeling a little awkward. "But I'd still like to get home as soon as possible though. Waiting there's an assignment which I need to get on with, a very worried mom, a kid sister who's most likely worse, and a newly pregnant friend who… I don't think knows what to do."

All five girls looked quite surprised at what I just said, and they all cast concerned glances at each other – yep, even Izzy.

"Wow, that's… a lot to leave behind." Bridgette remarked. "Sorry to hear about it."

"No offence, but your story's probably the craziest drunk story I've ever heard. And that is saying something, I guess." Gwen put in.

"Oh, no, none taken." I shook my head. "But yeah, I don't think anything like that is bound to happen again – to anyone, at that."

"Well, card games are still going on, so Izzy's gotta go!" Izzy said, spinning on her heel and sprinting off. "See you guys later!" She yelled.

I spent the next… half an hour, or something, sitting by the pool with the others. We were all talking about different things – mostly for them, what they got up to after finishing high school. I soon learnt that the school they all went to was a boarding school, which was brought up a few times. I also got to hear several interesting – and quite funny – stories about Chris McLean, who their whole class had for a homeroom teacher, as well as a drama teacher.

And, of course, I told them a few stories about myself. I managed to have them all laughing when I mentioned that I was wearing Shane's shoes when I woke up. By now, that little thing was pretty hilarious, I did have to admit. On the other end of the stick, I got lots of apologies and hugs once I spoke about my dad's passing, which I managed to go through with dry eyes.

After a great deal of a conversation, both Leshawna and Courtney headed back to their rooms, both of them having college assignments to do a bit of research on.

Well, I don't think I would have been smart enough to take college supplies along for the ride – I would have had to pay a visit home to do that. And if that _had_ happened, Kitty would have texted me immediately to tell me what I was doing. Not like I'd check my phone at that time and stage.

Eventually, I myself went back down to where the others were, and slowly walked past the room where everyone was playing card games. This time, Noah had joined them.

Deciding to not distract them from the game, I quietly walked back to the room and sat on the bed, wondering what else I could do.

A library was the next thing that came to mind. If there was a library somewhere nearby, I could maybe go there and find a book to read. Or even a bookstore – I had money, so I could just go and buy a book. Where would be the closest one though?

And then I'd have to find an electronics store so I could get a new charger for my phone, which most likely had messages flooding in. But of course, I couldn't check them right this minute. Unless someone else had a charger of a similar size…

I sat there for quite a while just staring into space, my mind drifting off and thinking about all the things I needed to do. I didn't even notice Noah come back – I just remained there, feeling far away from everything.

"I have to get home as soon as possible." I blurted out without thinking, dragging me back down to earth. "Oh… whoops…"

"Huh?"

I looked over my shoulder to see a confused Noah looking right back at me. Did I really say that out loud or what?

"Well… I _would_ like to get back to Ottawa whenever I can, I guess." I said, swinging my legs onto the bed. "Later today, if I could."

"Why not go tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow… why tomorrow?"

"That's when the rest of us are going back… eh. Your decision."

Go back home tomorrow instead of today? I wasn't too sure on the idea. But then a couple of pretty good reasons to stay another day came to mind. One was the fact that I'd be leaving these guys to pay for a bill that accounted for four people, when there was just three of them there. Secondly, I was in _Las Vegas_. Sure, I didn't exactly want to be here in the first place, but now that I was, I kind of wanted to see a few of the sights here.

On the other hand, there were many reasons as to why I should go home today. Get back onto my assignment, stop my mom and Kitty from worrying about me, help Maria a bit, now that she was pregnant… they were all good reasons to come home.

I lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, wondering about what was possibly going on back home.

"Hey guys, we're gonna be going out soon!" Izzy suddenly yelled from down the hallway. "And you can't skip out of this one, Noah!"

"Yay. Can't wait." Noah droned, not sounding very excited at all.

Well, _I_ was sort of excited about going out. Mainly because it meant that I could go and get a new charger. A charged phone meant contact with anyone back in Ottawa who had been trying to get hold of me. Even the police might have been called onto the case.

I looked down at my black track pants, and realized that they weren't exactly the best thing to wear when walking around the city. My jeans were probably in my bag – they'd be perfect. But my sandals possibly weren't great for lots of walking, even though I had walked for twenty minutes straight last night.

Reaching over and grabbing my bag off the floor, I zipped open the main compartment. In there I saw my purple top, my passport, my jeans (which I pulled out and tossed to the side), an empty beer bottle… wait, an empty beer bottle? Did I have a heap of beer last night or something?

That was _definitely_ not like me. But who knows what else I did while I was drunk?

I put my bag back down on the floor and turned round to face the window. What exactly _was_ happening back at home? Did the police _actually_ get called? Had I been reported missing? Or did they know of my location?

 **Earlier that morning, in Ottawa…**

I woke up to the neighbours' dog barking like mad. I groaned into my pillow and rolled over, sinking down into my sleeping bag to try and block out the noise. Not much, really, but I couldn't be bothered doing anything else.

I opened my eyes slightly and could just see the clock on the wall, which read quarter to seven. That early? Not fair…

I stayed there for a few minutes before I decided to get up, slowly crawling out of my sleeping bag and standing up on the edge of the mattress. I looked behind me, and saw that Layla and Candy were still asleep. I walked out of the living room and quietly jogged upstairs, stopping by Emma's closed bedroom door on the way. She was probably in there, either still sleeping or already up and hunched over her college textbooks. _So_ typical.

I wondered what she actually _was_ doing. I slowly opened the door and peeked inside… but she wasn't there. Huh?

I went down to the end of the hallway and looked in the bathroom. Nope, not there either. I turned around and slowly walked back downstairs. I heard noises in the kitchen, and just about ran over to the entrance, only to see my mom sitting at the counter, reading a magazine.

"Uh… Mom?" I said, walking in. "Have you seen Emma?"

"Oh, not yet. She's probably still in bed." My mom replied, looking up.

"That's kinda the problem… she's not in bed. Or anywhere upstairs."

"Really? How strange… she may have ended up staying over at the party."

"Maybe… maybe she did. I'll go text her and ask." I walked out and ran back upstairs, this time going into my room. "Okay… where's my phone again? Wait, on charge…"

I got down on my knees and pulled the charger cord out of my phone. Five minutes later, after going through some other texts, I had sent a message to Emma, asking her if she had stayed over. It's probably what happened, but I don't know.

"Kitty, where'd you go?" I heard Candy call from downstairs. "We're gonna put on another movie!"

"Coming!" I called back, running back out and almost stumbling down the stairs. "Oh, do you know what you're putting on yet?" I asked as I stopped outside the living room.

"No, you can choose this time!"

"Yay! Ooh, I bought Mamma Mia last week, and I haven't even watched it yet. We should _totally_ put that one on!"

"Oh, I love Mamma Mia!" Layla gushed, falling back onto her sleeping bag. "Lets' put it on!"

"Okay!" I sat down and scooted over to the DVD cupboard, pulling one door open and grabbing a bunch of DVDs. Coincidentally, Mamma Mia was right on the top. "Got it!"

We spent the next hour or so just sitting there and watching the movie, eating bowls of Apple Jacks that my mom had bought out. But only ten to fifteen minutes into the movie, Candy's phone started ringing. I quickly paused the movie as she answered the call.

"Hey sis, how's- wait, slow down. Emma's… what?"

My heart suddenly sank. Something was up… but I didn't know what.

"She's not even there? Was she at yours?"

Emma wasn't even there. Oh no.

"Holy crap… that's pretty crazy. Should I tell Kitty- no? Okay…"

Yep, something was definitely up. And it didn't sound good at all.

"Yeah, I'll see you later, I guess. Bye!" Candy ended the call and looked over at me. "Kitty, Emma's not even at Rhys and Jamie's flat."

I felt like I'd just been on a wild rollercoaster – the whole world felt like it was spinning. No, no, not good, not good.

"She's… not?" I managed to say, shaking my head.

"No… Maria hasn't seen her all morning. Anyway, we should keep watching the movie."

I silently nodded and resumed the movie, grabbing my phone with my free hand and then putting the remote down. I quickly sent a text to Emma, telling her what I had just learnt. To my surprise, there was no reply to my previous messages, one of them I sent last night, just before we all went to bed. I felt sick to my stomach and kind of shaky. This could _not_ be happening.

I tried to distract myself with the movie, but it wasn't working. I was suddenly feeling really worried. Who knows what happened to Emma? Where exactly was she anyway?

"Is everything alright in here, girls?" My mom called from the kitchen.

"Uh… sort of?" Layla slowly replied.

"There's just… just one problem." I said, my voice quavering. "We don't know where Emma is. She… she's not at Rhys and Jamie's flat."

"Or at my house." Candy chimed in.

My mom said nothing. She just remained quiet.

The whole house was silent for what felt like a century. The three of us just sat there. No wind rustled the trees outside. It was so quiet that, even over the noise of the movie, I could hear my pet mice Poppy and Starlet squeaking away about something. I had always wondered what they were saying.

An hour into the movie, and there was still no reply from Emma. By then I could only think that she didn't have her phone or just wasn't answering for… various reasons.

I looked out towards the kitchen, but didn't see my mom in there. Feeling confused, I got up and walked round to the dining room, and I saw her sitting on one of the chairs, her head and arms resting on the table. Something told me that she was worried, too.

Quietly walking back into the living room, I grabbed my phone and sent Emma yet another text. I knew she'd have to be somewhere nearby. Maybe her phone was flat.

About ten or so minutes later, Candy got another call from Maria, and had to hold the phone away from her ear – Maria was yelling and crying about something.

"Whoa, whoa, just calm down!" Candy said hurriedly once the line went quiet. "Take a deep breath… and tell me what happened."

Layla and I just continued on with watching the movie, neither of us sure on what else to do. Before long, the call was over and Candy let out a massive sigh.

"What's up, Cands?" I asked.

"Oh gosh… it's- oh, whatever. I'm gonna be an auntie." Candy replied, sounding quite baffled.

"You're… hold on, Maria's _pregnant_?" Layla exclaimed. "Do your parents know yet?"

"No, but I dunno how they'll react when they do find out. I mean, they know that Shane's a good guy, but they are pretty protective of Maria."

Suddenly, my phone started ringing. Emma?

I held my breath as I picked up my phone, not even glancing at the caller as I answered it.

"Hello?" I said.

" _Hey, is this Kitty_?" An unfamiliar voice asked on the other end. It wasn't Emma.

"Uh… yeah, it is." I replied. "What is it?"

" _I'm Sara. Just calling to tell you that Emma's not here_."

"Yeah, I found out about that earlier. Is there anything else I need to know?"

" _It's where she's gone. She left at about… ten to two in the morning with another girl… okay, promise me that you won't freak out about this. It's a bit of a hard hitter._ "

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Go ahead." I said.

" _I don't know where exactly she went off to, but the last place I was told she was headed to was… the airport._ "

I almost dropped my phone. The airport?

"The airport?" I repeated. "What the heck?"

" _I know, I know, it's really crazy. But that's all I know so far. Uh oh, sorry, I gotta go, my little brothers are having a fight._ "

The line then went dead. I just sat there, too stunned to say anything. Silently turning back to my phone, I went to my messages and sent one last text to Emma.

Oh Emma… where did you go?

 **xx**

 **And there we have it, another chapter!**

 **So, Emma's about to go out with Izzy, Owen and Noah (and possibly get a phone charger along the way), and Kitty's probably freaking out about now.**

 **Anyway… that's it for this week. Until next time!**


	4. Chapter 4: Benefits of Being Lost

**Hey people!**

 **Sorry again, missed the deadline yesterday D: but better now than never, I guess. Anyway, onto this chapter.**

 **I don't own Total Drama. I own any OCs mentioned, but they're just filler characters.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 4 – Benefits of Being Lost**

 **xx**

Appropriate city clothes, check. Borrowed sandals from Izzy, check. Tidier hair, check. Clean face with make-up washed off, _check_.

I looked at myself in the mirror, which was in a nearby bathroom. Even though Izzy had said that we were going out very soon, I did manage to squeeze in some time where I got to at least tidy myself up, including washing my face, brushing my hair (I had brought a brush along when I went to the party, just in case), and, of course, swapping my track pants for my jeans.

"Hey Emma, you ready?" Izzy called from outside. "We're going now!"

"Coming!" I called back as I walked out, grabbing my bag from next to the door.

"Aw, come on! Why not?" I heard Owen complain from mine and Noah's room.

"Because there is no point." Noah then replied. "I'd rather stay here and finish this book, where there is _no_ noise."

Crap. Sounded just like me trying to get out of parties or outings with friends. Well, apart from the 'no noise' thing – I sometimes listened to music while studying. _Sometimes_.

"Noah, you are coming with us, whether you _like_ it, or _not_!" Izzy growled, sounding pretty fed up. "You need to get off your butt and do something for once."

Not sure what to do, I just stood there, feeling somewhat awkward. It probably wasn't a good idea to interfere on the little… well, 'chat'.

Soon, I heard the door click shut, and looked up to see the three of them there. Izzy was smiling excitedly as if nothing had happened, Owen was sort of smiling, and Noah looked like he'd just been slapped in the face… not literally.

"So… we are going now?" I asked, looking around.

"Yep-yep, it's time to go!" Izzy replied, grinning. "Let's do this!" She performed a cartwheel before running over to stop in front of the lifts, slamming her finger on the down button.

"WOO!" Owen cheered as he thundered past.

I shrugged and walked over to the elevators, feeling somewhat excited. I guess that exploring the city a bit would be pretty good. Maybe it wasn't just a party that I needed to… well, let loose. Maybe there was more to it.

Soon enough, we were outside the building, waiting there because Izzy wanted to find a map that she had apparently lost.

By this time, I had pretty much confirmed to myself that Izzy was a bit weird in the head. I swear I saw her swinging on the doorframe of a room some time earlier. But it wasn't long until she came back with a folded up map in hand.

"Phew, wow, that was just outside the casino!" She said, laughing. "Alright, where to first? Fremont Street? The Strip?"

"Why don't we just… walk along and see where it takes us?" I suggested. "But still use the map, of course."

"Hey, good idea!"

For the next ten minutes, we just walked up and down various streets, checking out everything we saw along the way. Well… three of us did. Noah just stood back and waited outside wherever we were.

While inside a place called ABC Stores (which sold island themed clothing) on the Fremont Street Experience, I saw him standing outside, looking… kind of sad. Guilty, even. I felt sorry for him. Even though he was probably being a bit lazy earlier. Or was it college related?

That's when I realized that I was pretty much the same. Always refusing to go to parties. Always staying at my desk with an open textbook nearby. And _always_ putting study before friends. I had lost a couple of friends because of that… but they weren't very nice people anyway.

Shaking my head to get rid of the thoughts, I continued walking slowly around the store. There wasn't really anything that I was interested in buying.

I suddenly stopped, remembering something. I couldn't buy anything anyway. I only had Canadian money with me.

"Hey Emma, you okay?" Izzy asked, running over.

"I just realized that I've only got Canadian money with me." I replied, getting my wallet out and opening it.

"Oh… that sucks! Well, we're moving on to the next store, so c'mon!" Izzy grabbed my wrist and just about dragged me out of the store. Owen was already waiting outside with Noah, who still… looked the same.

"Man, I'm hungry." Owen said, sighing.

"Here we go again…" Noah groaned.

"Heheh…"

Next place we stopped at was a café, at Owen's insistence. I guess Izzy couldn't blame him – she was apparently hungry as well. And so was I. But I had no idea on what I'd do, with the wrong currency in my wallet.

I sat down at the window side of a table and put my bag on the floor. Izzy and Owen were already at the counter ordering food, while Noah was rifling through a pile of newspapers.

It was pretty obvious that I wasn't to be getting anything. I'd probably just have to wait until we got back to the hotel. But, when Izzy came back, I noticed she had two plates with quiches on them.

"Are those-" I began, but stopped myself as one of the quiches was placed in front of me. "Oh… you didn't have to."

"Hey-hey, you still get to eat something, right?" Izzy said, plopping down in the seat opposite as Noah walked over with a newspaper in hand.

"Uh… yeah, right. Thanks!"

To be honest, I wasn't expecting Izzy to be so selfless. I guess it wasn't exactly what her first impression on me was when I first met her proper. It was more 'weird but friendly'.

Owen soon came back with three plates – two with a large ham and salad roll on each, and one with two caramel slices.

"Man, this looks _good_." He said, chuckling.

Also unexpected. How can one eat so much in a single sitting? Well, in this situation, it looked like Owen could.

It wasn't long before we were out of there and back on the road… or pavement, I guess. Where we were off to next, I still didn't know.

We ended up going all over downtown, including walking a large part of The Strip… and repeating that.

There were so many shops that we visited, I stopped counting them once we got to six or seven. But after walking so far, we came to a large shopping centre, where we stayed for a while, just wandering around it.

I thought that I was going to get nothing but a quiche out of this trip, until a magenta coloured halter-neck top had caught my eye. Before I could walk off, Izzy dragged me into the store and told me to find my size in it and try it on, insisting that she'd pay for it.

"If you really like it, then why should you just leave it?" She said with a laugh as we walked out, handing me a bag with the top inside. "Hey, where'd the guys go?" She asked, stopping outside.

I looked around, and fortunately, saw Owen and Noah walking out of a video game store just across from us.

"There they are!" I called, just as Izzy spotted them.

"Phew! Alright, where to next?"

The next while was more wandering, more window shopping, no more buying anything for a little while. That is, until we got to an electronics store.

"Hey Emma, didn't you say you needed a charger or something?" Izzy asked while we were stopped outside it.

"Yeah, I did, but-" I began, but Izzy cut me off by whipping out a couple of dollar bills – a ten and a twenty – and holding them out in front of me. "Oh… thanks?"

"Buy one with that! And if you can't find one, keep it!" She said as I took them.

"Okay, thanks!" I smiled before suddenly noticing something – Noah was missing. "Uh… where's Noah?"

"Huh?" Owen looked around, but didn't seem to see Noah. "Aw, where's my little buddy gone? I hope he's not lost!"

"Hey, there's a bookstore nearby!" Izzy exclaimed, pointing up to a sign above us. "He's probably in there, the lazy butt!" She turned to face me. "Emma, you go find that phone charger, and we'll meet you back here!"

Before I could say anything, Izzy and Owen were both jogging along the side of the massive walkway. Shrugging, I went into the electronics store, and started looking for charger cords. But as soon as I turned a corner, who should I see but Noah standing at the counter, which was at the other end of the aisle. Wait… was it Noah?

I slowly walked down the aisle and soon realized that it wasn't him – the guy had shorter, raven black hair, and was very carefully holding a bag open, almost like he didn't want to touch the boxed item that the cashier was putting in.

Before I knew it, I was merely a few feet away from him. Knowing that he'd probably regard me as a creep for being so close, I frantically looked around for something to keep me occupied.

Nope, too late.

"Um… I'm finished…?" The guy said slowly, holding the bag with only one finger.

"Uh…" I looked down at the display box next to me, and lo and behold, there were packaged charger cords in there – and they were just the right size for my phone. "Yeah, I've got something." I said, hastily grabbing one and stepping forward.

"Okay… oh, have you seen my cousin Noah? I saw him with you and a couple of others earlier…"

So this was Noah's cousin. Interesting.

"Actually, not recently. He disappeared a few minutes ago." I replied as I handed the money over to the cashier, getting six dollars back in change. "Izzy and Owen have gone down to the bookstore to check there, but I don't know."

"Can… you help me find him? Or something…"

"Er… yeah, I guess I could. I've got nothing better to do right now."

Soon, we were walking in the direction of the bookstore that Izzy and Owen went off to. On the way there, I learned a few things about this guy – Dave. Senior at Wawanakwa High, hated germs, was currently on spring break, and was in love with a girl called Sky, but she apparently had a boyfriend called Keith.

Once we got to the bookstore, I immediately noticed that Izzy and Owen weren't in there. Well, Owen, anyway. I had no idea about Izzy.

Having split up from Dave to search the store, I found myself distracted by several books in the adult fiction. I reached forward to grab one, but stopped when I heard something.

" _No_ Samey, you are _so_ not getting that book." A girl's voice said. "I'll have it instead."

Oh dear. I looked to my right and saw two identical blonde girls standing by the teen fiction books, one of them with an obvious beauty mark and was holding a book away from the other, who looked quite sad – almost betrayed.

Scrap the book, I had to help the poor girl. I walked over and stopped behind her, just as the beauty mark girl noticed me.

"Ew, bug off, stranger!" She snapped with an icy glare. I wasn't backing down that easy.

"I think you should let her have the book." I said calmly but firmly, earning a thankful glance from the other girl.

"Amy, please-" She began, but to my absolute surprise, Amy kicked her in the shin. "OW!"

"Okay, that's just plain cruel. She doesn't deserve that treatment at all."

"So what? She's a total loser anyway." Amy shrugged indifferently. "And I've _always_ been the better sister."

This Amy girl needed a bit of a talk, I could see that.

"Alright, first off, how can you be like that to your _own sister_? I've got a little sister back home, and sure, she gets a bit annoying at times, but I don't treat her like crap for it. Secondly, you're identical twins with two differences – she hasn't got a beauty mark," I gestured to the girl on the floor, "nor does she… act like a bitch." I didn't usually curse, but in this situation I guess it wouldn't really hurt.

"Excuse me, you did _just_ not say that to _me_." Amy folded her arms, looking somewhat… annoyed and astonished. "I'm the cheer captain back at school, guys are all over me, and everyone's gonna make sure they vote for me as prom queen in May."

"Well I'm a law student in my second year of college, so cheer captain and prom queen don't really come close to that."

That got her. Amy's jaw dropped, and she looked lost for words.

"I- ugh. What- _ever_." She scoffed, putting the book back on the shelf and stomping off. "Do NOT go anywhere, Samey!" She yelled back. "I won't be gone for long!"

All I could do was shake my head. Made me wonder how her parents dealt with her.

"She's called me that ever since third grade…" A sad voice piped up.

"What did she call you?" I asked, looking down at Samey – if that was her name.

"Well… my real name is Samantha, or Sammy for short." She replied. "But Amy… she just… puts me down in every way possible and tries to convince everyone that I'm-"

"She's over there!" I heard Dave call from some distance away. Was he talking to Izzy, Owen or Noah?

I looked up, only to see that it was neither of the three, but a tall guy with honey brown hair running over. And, it looked to be that Sammy was who he was after.

"I… think there's someone to see you." I said, bending over and tapping Sammy on the shoulder.

"Huh?" She looked up and gasped, visibly blushing. "Oh, Topher! Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Well firstly, I saw what happened just before… you gotta start standing up for yourself. You can't let Amy treat you like that." The guy replied, kneeling down.

"I know… I just don't… don't have the confidence to do it." Sammy said, looking down. "It's been going on for so long…"

Deciding that it was time for me to move on, I started to turn around… until the complete unexpected happened.

"Yeah… anyway, that's not what I came here for." Topher continued as they both slowly stood up. "I've been waiting to do this for… er, quite a while, but I just didn't know how it would play out."

I couldn't help but smile – I knew what was coming next. And I think Sammy knew too – she had both hands clasped in front of her and a very surprised, yet anticipating expression on her face.

"Sammy, we've known each other since seventh grade, and even though I know Amy _probably_ won't be that pleased… scrap that, she'll be pissed. But she'll have to fight me first, because I'm the one doing it, so…" Topher got down on one knee, as if he was proposing. "Samantha Louise Willis, will you be my girlfriend?"

Sammy squeaked and clapped her hands to her mouth, closing her eyes for a few seconds.

I wanted to leave and get on with trying to find Izzy and the guys, but I wanted to see the result of this at the same time. I looked around the bookstore, and noticed that several people had stopped to watch. One person stood out quite a bit – Amy was standing at the end of the aisle, her eyes as wide as saucers and her mouth forming a silent 'o'.

"I- oh my gosh… uh… yes!" Sammy hastily replied, seeming not too sure on what to say.

"NO!" Amy stormed down the aisle, her angered gaze locked on Sammy, who had turned to face her.

"Whoa there dudette, let them have their moment." A voice said as a tanned, masculine arm stopped her from going any further.

"Out of my way!" Amy snapped, pushing the arm aside and proceeding forward.

I barely knew these people, but I didn't want a fight of some sort to break out. I had to act fast.

All of a sudden, an unusually tall dark skinned girl stepped out and grabbed Amy's shoulder, just about lifting her up in the air.

"Now what right do you have to interrupt that?" She asked, a thick Australian accent in her voice. "Sammy didn't do anything – Topher was the one who asked."

"Let me go!" Amy protested, trying to pull away. "Samey doesn't _deserve_ a boyfriend!"

Being so focussed on what was happening, I only just spotted Sammy running past with her face in her hands. I ran after her without thinking twice.

Round corners, in between a few shelves, and it wasn't until we got to the other side of the store that Sammy stopped and slumped onto her knees, crying bitterly. I slowly walked over and knelt down beside her.

"It's okay, it's okay…" I said in my most soothing voice possible, gently rubbing her shoulder. "You know she probably just said that out of spite."

Instead of getting a reply, Sammy only cried harder. I sighed and shook my head – this was going to take a little while.

I heard a pair of footsteps coming closer, and looked over my shoulder, just as Amy herself jogged around the corner. I stood up, deciding that I wasn't going to let her have the first say in this one.

"Do you see what you've done?" I asked her, gesturing to Sammy. "That I would maybe expect to see between two unrelated girls at a school somewhere. But when it happens between sisters – twin sisters to be exact – that's when it just gets… pretty much unacceptable. To be honest, I've never seen anything as ugly as this. Why do you torment her so much anyway?"

"That… that's a long story, but…" Amy began. I wasn't finished, however.

"Actually, put it this way. Imagine what it would be like in her shoes. Would _you_ wish you didn't get constantly bullied and put down by your own sister? Would _you_ wish you could have the freedom of going out with guys if one was to ask you out?"

Amy stood there, looking on in complete silence. Either it was starting to sink in, or she just wasn't listening. I couldn't be bothered to find out – I had to go.

"Just think about that." I told her before turning round and walking towards the exit.

Once I got there, I suddenly remembered that Dave was most probably still in the bookstore. But then again, he may have wandered over to see what was going on earlier. He could have found Noah in here, or in another store.

A hand suddenly tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to see Sammy standing there, a small smile on her face.

"Thanks for telling Amy that." She said. "I… uh, don't know whether it'll work or not… but it's a start on turning her attitude round."

"No problem. Just doing what I could do, I guess." I replied, smiling. I then saw Topher out of the corner of my eye and decided that now I had to go. "Well I better get going, still looking for some friends that I lost earlier." I said, quickly checking my surroundings to see if either Izzy, Owen or Noah were nearby. "So I'll see you another time, I guess."

"Okay, bye!" Sammy waved as I walked off.

Where to next? I looked around at all the stores I could see, and spotted a café not too far away – Owen could have stopped there with Noah or Izzy, or both, to have another snack.

Speaking of a snack, after all the drama I'd just been… pretty much involved with, I myself really needed something. More like a coffee than a snack, however.

I walked down to the café and ordered a cappuccino, sitting down at a two-seater table close to the counter. Finally, time to relax a bit.

"Emma!" A voice called out.

Maybe not. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see someone like Izzy, but I breathed out a sigh of relief – it was Bridgette.

"Hey!" I called back, waving. "Feel free to come and sit down!"

"I'd love to, but I've got to go back to the hotel in a few minutes – Geoff just called me to say that an old friend of mine showed up."

"Oh… that's okay!"

As Bridgette walked off, I suddenly realized that I was feeling quite a bit better than I was this morning. Sure, my headache was still there, but there wasn't that much of it left.

Another thing I noticed was that I was feeling more relaxed and calm than I ever had in a long time. It was a nice feeling, despite being away from home. That's when it hit me. Away from home, away from my _assignment_ – I hadn't even been thinking about it that much. That definitely surprised me.

My coffee then came, and a few minutes after, so did a familiar face.

"Darn it, finally." Noah said, plummeting onto the seat opposite.

"Where did you go off to?" I asked after taking a sip of my drink.

"Well first it was the electronics store, where I got a phone charger. Then I got a call from my mom, saying that I had to buy a present for my little sister, because it was her birthday in a couple of days. It… was difficult. She's fussy for a six year old."

"Six year old?"

"Yeah, I've got a big family." Noah shrugged as if it was nothing. "I'm the second oldest."

"Wow… oh, I did meet your cousin earlier… Dave?"

"Wait, he's here? I never knew."

"Well… I _think_ some of his classmates are too. Met some twins earlier… and kind of sorted out a little bit of drama between them." I used air quotes around 'little bit'.

"Oh boy, don't remind me about that. I had to tutor one for Canadian history during my senior year, and it was not easy. She was a downright bitch ninety-nine percent of the time."

I presumed he was talking about Amy, but still, it was surprising to hear.

"HEY! There you guys are!" I heard Izzy yell from some distance away. "Izzy's been all over this whole place looking for you!"

Soon enough, Izzy ran over and skidded to a stop in front of the table's empty space.

"Uh… where's Owen?" Noah asked, looking around and raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, he just went to the toilet!"

"Oh. _Nice_."

"You _did_ ask." I put in, shrugging. "Hey, do you guys want to order something?"

After Owen got back, we were all sitting around the table, which had been made bigger when Izzy dragged another two-seater table over so that all four of us could have a seat. I ended up ordering a small chocolate brownie with the money I had left, with the other three doing the same, yet Owen had two of them.

While there, Izzy told about what she and Owen had done while we were split up. It was the bookstore first, but of course didn't find Noah there, so they went just about all over the entire shopping centre. I was quite glad I wasn't with them – at one point Owen farted and 'stunk out the whole store', as Izzy put it. One of the benefits of being lost, I guess.

And then it was my turn. I told them every single detail, from meeting Dave, to sorting out the drama between Amy and Sammy, right up until Noah found me.

"Whoa, that's a lotta stuff!" Izzy remarked with a laugh, leaning to the side to look behind Owen. "Ooh, look who's here."

I looked over my shoulder, and to be honest I wasn't surprised – Amy was back.

"What do you want this time?" I asked, standing up and turning to face her.

"Well I was going to say how ugly your shoes are, but I can't be bothered, actually." Amy said with a shrug. Nice.

"Okay. Thanks. They're not even my shoes anyway. And I've got something else to say too, now that I think about it."

"Uh… whatever."

This one was really going to hurt.

"Your looks could get you closer to being prom queen. Your _personality_ won't at all. In fact, I think you'd be more likely to get drama queen instead."

Amy gasped sharply, her eyebrows shooting up in shock. Simultaneously, Owen, Izzy and Noah all burst out laughing.

"OH YEAH! You tell her!" Izzy managed to say.

I heard more laughter from further away, and I looked to my right, spotting Sammy and the tall, dark skinned girl both laughing, although Sammy's was more reserved.

Owen was laughing quite hard, and before I realized what could happen, he farted. My hand immediately flew to my nose and mouth just in time. That's when I noticed that Amy was a few feet away from him.

"EWWWWWWWW!" She shrieked, running off into the closest store – a lingerie shop. "EW! EW! EW!"

I shook my head and laughed – she'd make an excellent drama queen if there was ever one at a prom.

After the other three calmed down, we finished eating, and then went off again, this time heading back outside.

"Hey Noah, is there anywhere in Las Vegas you wanna go to?" Owen asked as we exited the shopping centre.

"Uh, yeah, back to the hotel." Noah replied.

"No, not the hotel – any… sights you want to see."

"Oh. Well no thanks, I'm perfectly fine."

"Aw, come on, there's gotta be one!"

"There isn't one. Go ask Crazy over there." Noah pointed ahead to where Izzy was running and jumping along.

"But she's pretty much chosen everywhere we've been… apart from the cafés… heheh…"

"Right. And no point asking you, it'll just be for more food."

Only one person left to choose – me.

"Well… I'm not exactly sure, to be honest." I said, walking faster to catch up with the two guys. "Maybe a museum or something."

"Finally, something decent." Noah said, sighing exasperatedly.

"Is it a museum about food?" Owen asked.

"I don't think there's a museum about food here, Owen."

"Aw…"

I looked around for some form of inspiration on where to go. We continued walking for another ten minutes, but I still found nothing.

Then, I stopped. I found a place just across the road that could probably be good for all four of us.

"What about the Mob Museum?" I called ahead to the guys, who stopped as soon as I said 'Mob Museum'.

"Did I hear Mob Museum?" Izzy yelled from even further ahead as I continued walking.

"Yes, Izzy. Yes you did." Noah called back to her. "And where is it anyway?"

"Right there." I replied as I stopped next to him, pointing across the road.

"Meh, better than walking for hours on end. Let's go."

"Izzy! We're going to the Mob Museum!" Owen called, getting an excited whoop in response.

 **xx**

 **There, finally done. This one was very fun to write, I'll tell you that.**

 **So next update is in 2 weeks as per norm. And since it's only a few days away, merry Christmas, and a happy new year. :)**

 **Until next time!**


	5. Chapter 5: A Series of Unexpected Events

**Late by a day again? Wow, I'm slack. xD**

 **Anyway… this chapter's got a lot happening, and as you can see, I did a bit of a reference to Lemony Snicket's 'Series of Unfortunate Events' with the chapter title. Only this time, there's going to be a lot of unexpected things happening**

 **I don't own Total Drama or Ridonculous Race. I own any OCs that are mentioned, but mainly, they're just filler characters.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 5 – A Series of Unexpected Events**

 **xx**

At first glance, I had a slight feeling that the Mob Museum wouldn't really be that interesting. But as soon as I set foot inside it, I was proved wrong. Very, _very_ wrong.

I waited by the door as Izzy, Noah and Owen paid for tickets. I assumed that Izzy would pay for mine, as she had done with various other things earlier on. Soon enough, she was running back to join me, two tickets clutched in her hand.

"C'mon, we're splitting up from the guys for this one!" She hissed, pressing one ticket into my hand and dragging me off – it was too late for me to say anything else.

Before I knew it, we were inside the museum proper. I was surprised to notice that it looked slightly bigger than it did on the outside.

"So where are we going first?" I asked, looking at the map I had picked up earlier.

"Oh, we're starting from the bottom going up, and the guys are starting from the top and going down!" Izzy replied.

"Okay… why's that?"

"Izzy will tell you in a minute! Ooh, wall of infamy!"

I looked ahead and saw a red wall with many pictures on it in three rows, one on top of the other. On the side, just before the pictures, there was a plaque of some sort with large letters on it in white and in capitals.

'100 YEARS OF MADE MEN & THEIR ASSOCIATES', it read. Down below, there was a smaller version of it with a couple of small paragraphs following.

I eventually caught onto it – these were all the profiles of famous figures (more like infamous figures, really) in the Mob's history. This would be interesting.

"Woo, this looks awesome!" Izzy cheered, running off to start at the other end of the hallway.

I shrugged and started looking at the pictures, spotting a few that I knew of – Albert Anastasia, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Al Capone – and on the bottom of each picture was information about the person, as well as crimes they'd committed.

This was interesting, doing something that I wouldn't have dreamed of doing this morning. I came to Las Vegas unintentionally, desperately wanting to get back home. Here I was now, enjoying myself at the Mob Museum. It was almost laughable, I guess.

After a good few minutes, I met Izzy in the middle, and we continued on looking at the ones on the opposite ends.

Soon enough, it was onto the next exhibition, which was about wiretapping, bugs and surveillance. I eventually learned it was in the 1970s when federal authorities brought in new technology to bring down the worst of the Mob.

I ended up losing Izzy for a couple of minutes, but found her already going forward to whatever was next.

After going through two more exhibitions, including a simulator training thing which Izzy was desperately keen to do, it was onto international organized crime, where all the traditional mobster crimes were on plaques scattered around on a wall. There was human trafficking, drug trafficking, diamond smuggling, cyber-crime, identity theft, kidnapping… there were too many to mention.

Suddenly, once we got to the 'Hollywood and the Mob' exhibition, Izzy pulled me to the side, quickly looking around for anyone. I got a slight hunch about what this was for.

"Wait, is this about what you were going to tell me earlier?" I asked as a family of four walked past, the two kids – who looked to be pre-teens – walking ahead of their parents.

"Yes. Yes it is." Izzy said slowly, narrowing her eyes before laughing. "Ha, got you! Anyway… yeah, this is what I wanted to tell you earlier."

"Okay, go ahead."

Izzy cleared her throat before beginning, turning round to face me.

"Izzy's noticed something. Something that's been going on for quite a while." She said, crossing her arms. "Well… today, anyway."

I waited patiently, although I was anticipating what was to come… whatever it was.

"Is it… something bad?" I blurted out without thinking.

"Oh, no way, it's not bad!" Izzy laughed, shaking her head. "I guess it depends though, because Izzy doesn't know if you'll look at it as a bad thing or not."

It depended on what I thought of it. For some reason I felt like I should be scared.

"Yeah… Izzy thinks that Noah likes you."

"Wait, what?" I almost fell backwards – what a bombshell to drop. "How… can you see that? I didn't notice anything."

"Really? Well he's staring at you a lot!"

Alright then… now I was scared. I barely even knew Noah enough to know what I thought of him.

"Oh… okay then. Anything else?"

"Ooh, Izzy just remembered – Noah said he'd pay for your ticket. And his ticket too, of course."

"So… that's it?"

"Yep-yep, that's it! Come on, let's go look at the rest of this level!"

I was in a bit of a daze for a while as we kept on going, still trying to grasp onto what Izzy had just said.

 _Izzy thinks that Noah likes you_.

That one sentence never left my mind. It almost felt like it was permanently stuck in there for years to come.

It hadn't even been that long – that's what I really didn't understand. Only half a day, at best. Questions were starting to overflow in my mind, but I tried to keep them in - now wasn't _exactly_ the best time.

I tried to focus on the exhibitions we were going through, but it was just too hard. Well, until we got to the second floor, and Izzy dragged me over to another exhibition, which was all about the Kefauver Hearings. First up – a courtroom.

"Wonder why there's a courtroom here." I heard Izzy mutter, chuckling.

I looked around and saw an information plaque right by the entrance, and ran over to read it.

"Apparently this very building was a location for one of the ninety-two hearings that took place back in the fifties." I said, looking over my shoulder.

"Oh, that is _so_ cool!" Izzy sprinted over to read the plaque, grinning excitedly. "Ooh, that's a big part of my assignment. Better take a photo!" She whipped her phone out from her bag and quickly snapped a few photos of the plaque and the courtroom itself. "Okay, let's go onto the next one!"

It was quiet for the next couple of exhibitions – neither of us said anything. Halfway through an exhibition titled 'Spinning a Deadly Web', Izzy spotted Noah and Owen further ahead, and told me she was just going to talk to them for a bit.

"What for?" I asked as we stopped by a section of the exhibition designed like a spider web.

"Oh, just to ask them how it's going, and making sure that stuff's all going to plan… oh." Izzy clapped both of her hands over her mouth. "I dunno whether I was supposed to say that or not…"

I stood there for a few seconds, feeling very confused. Confusion turned to slight annoyance, and as gears started turning in my brain, anger started bubbling up inside me. Of course. All going to plan – it was a setup.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" I demanded, placing both hands on my hips and raising an eyebrow.

"Whoa, whoa, that's not-" Izzy began, but I wasn't going to let her finish.

"I know it's what I think it is. It's just a distraction – nothing you told me was true. Just a distraction."

"Emma, it isn't-"

"I'll try get a flight back to Ottawa tonight – maybe even before dinner. Because it's just no longer worth being here anymore. I can't trust you, or anyone."

I wanted to say more. But I'd ran out of the room before I gave myself a chance to.

"Izzy!" I heard a voice yell, sounding frustrated.

I kept on running, back down the stairs to the first floor, then bolting into the closest toilets. Locking myself in a cubicle, I put the lid down and sat on it, burying my face in my hands.

How could I have been so stupid? It didn't add up, how I hadn't caught onto it earlier. But why would they do such a thing?

It seemed to be all planned from once we set foot in the museum. Izzy had told me we were splitting up from the guys, and we were going from the bottom to the top. She'd even pulled me over at a certain point in our self-tour of the museum to break the news that Noah supposedly liked me.

I guessed that wasn't the case now. All three of them were probably still up there, complaining about how it didn't work out.

Half an hour passed, and I hadn't moved from the cubicle. I stared into space, thinking about all the mistakes I had made in life for… no apparent reason.

The one that stood out to me the most was going to a friend's party when I was fourteen. After getting the invitation, I went along to the party having been told it was just going to the movies and then to a nice restaurant. But instead, to my astonishment, it was something completely different. Loud music, far too many people, _a lot_ of alcohol and spiked punches – I called my mom about ten minutes after I'd arrived, and she came round as soon as she could to pick me up. From that evening on, I swore to never go to a party like that ever again. I even ended up late turning in an assignment, which I was supposed to have completed that night.

So truthfully, last night wasn't _really_ my first party, but that other one I wasn't even there for long.

I sighed and looked down at the floor. Why was I thinking about mistakes anyway? It'd only make me feel worse.

"Think positive…" I whispered to myself. "You can go home, get on with that assignment, and stop everyone from worrying."

I then sat up, beginning to wonder why I was still in the toilets. It wasn't exactly where I wanted to be right now, even though it _was_ the first place I ran to earlier. I dug around in my jeans pocket, grasping onto the key for the hotel room.

I guessed that going back to the hotel was a start. I still had my phone back there, as well as a couple of other things.

Standing up, I reached over and unlocked the cubicle door, letting it swing open as I walked out. Then suddenly, just as the door banged against the wall, the main door burst open and a girl ran in, absolutely seething.

"Ugh, stupid idiot, why did he lose the map?" She muttered, stomping her foot on the floor.

I looked at her for a few seconds, puzzle pieces slowly coming together… and I realized that I knew this girl.

"Uh… is there anything I can help you with?" I asked.

"What?" The girl looked up, her brow creased in anger, yet it rose up in surprise a second later. "Holy crap, Emma, is that _you_?"

"Yeah… Stephanie, right?"

"Girl, where have you been all this time? I'd been starting to wonder if we'd suddenly bump into each other, and here we go! Come on, let's get outta here and go into the lobby or something. We need a catch-up!"

I followed Stephanie out of the bathroom and we went round to the Hollywood exhibition, taking a seat on one of the curved velvet couches that were in there.

"So where have you been since middle school?" She asked. "And how's your dad's business?"

"Oh… well, he… he's not here anymore." I managed to say, suddenly fighting back tears. "I found out on one of my first few days of high school… my mom was on the phone crying as she broke the news."

"He… aw, no! That's terrible! I'm _so_ sorry about that! How have you been since then?"

"Pretty alright, actually. I still got on with high school, passed all my subjects, ended up as the top scholar-"

"Top scholar? That is not the girl I knew all those years ago."

"I know, but… I don't know if you remember Isla's party back… I don't know when."

"Oh, yeah, that's when I was in Paris with my parents. What about it?"

"Well after that, I swore to never go to a party like that ever again."

"Wait… you're saying that you didn't want to go out to the movies for a birthday party ever again?" Stephanie looked somewhat surprised.

"You didn't hear anything about what happened that night?"

"No, my phone broke down while we were there and it took a whole couple of weeks to get it fixed."

"Oh… well it wasn't that kind of party at all…"

"Whoa, whoa, do _not_ tell me it was a party with drunk people all over the place."

I could only sigh and look down – for that was exactly what it was.

"You kidding me? That's so… wrong! My parents didn't let me drink until my sixteenth birthday! Phew, I am _so glad_ right now that I went on that Europe holiday. So the invitations were… sort of fake?"

"Yeah… I guess that's the best way to put it. I turned in my English project late the next day because I was up half the night just crying… which is how I've gotten to where I am today."

"Oh, nice! Sooooo… how's Jake? Huh, huh?"

"He's… probably sitting in a cheap apartment waiting for someone else to show up, _if_ that's what's happened."

"What do- wait, you guys broke up?"

"The little weasel was cheating on me, actually. With _Penelope Hudson_."

"Penelope Hudson?" Stephanie shook her head in disbelief. "That little bitch has gotta stop running around and ruining relationships."

"Well. The funny thing is, Jake and Penelope stayed together for the rest of the school year, and I don't know what they're doing now – they both moved to Winnipeg after eleventh grade. But I wouldn't be surprised if Penelope dumped him for some other guy."

"Damn. Ugh, I can't _believe_ I was friends with her back in elementary. So you found more romance yet or nah?"

"No, I've been too busy with school, and college."

"Oh, did you get into Ottawa U?"

"Yeah, I did. Studying law like everyone else. So… where have you been over the past few years?"

The conversation went on for another whole hour, with me sitting and listening this time. As it had turned out, Stephanie had a bit of a rollercoaster ride over the years gone by. Moved to Toronto for high school, had three boyfriends (who all ended up as jerks), totally crazy sweet sixteenth party, went missing for a whole month after she finished high school... which was the result of a kidnapping, and was now juggling two things at once – sports modelling and college.

"Alright, you've asked me already, so… how's your love life been?" I asked, chuckling slightly

"Ooh, I managed to score one hunk of a man two months ago!" Stephanie replied with a loud laugh. "But right now he's a bit of an idiot because he lost the stupid map of the city. Now we'll probably take _ages_ trying to find our way to the Downtown Grand." She let out a frustrated groan.

"Hold up. Downtown Grand?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I don't think it's too far away from here… and that's where I'm also staying at."

"Oh, really? No way! Girl you gotta take us there! You… know where to go from here, right?"

"Yeah, I think it's just a few streets away or something."

"Awesome!" Stephanie leaned to her right to look past me, and her eyes widened in surprise. "Uh, there's a guy out there, I think he's staring at you or something. Looks kinda down in the dumps though." She said quietly.

"Oh?" I looked over to where Stephanie was looking, and saw a fairly downcast Noah standing there, now looking at the ground. "Oh… I wonder why he's here…"

"First I thought he was crushing on you or something, but I dunno now."

My head snapped back to face her – did she just say that? And was it still true?

"Funny you should say that, because I was told earlier that he _did_ seem to like me." I whispered, much to Stephanie's surprise. "By someone else though – not him."

"Wow… okay then. Anyway, I should probably find Ryan, wherever he's gone. I'll be back." Stephanie leapt out and ran off, presumably going out the back. "Ryan!" She called out. "We got a way to the hotel!"

I sighed and stared ahead, feeling somewhat relieved that I had found her. It had been a good five to six years since we last saw each other. I guessed that once we got back to the hotel, I'd probably have to tell her the whole story about how I got here in the first place.

I suddenly heard footsteps, and presumed it was either Stephanie or someone else touring the museum. But when I looked behind me, I saw that of course, it wasn't.

"Izzy's… sorry, by the way." Noah said with a sigh.

For a moment I was confused – did Noah even have anything to do with… whatever had happened?

"Okay?" I replied, looking away. "Where is she right now?"

"Sitting in the corner of the lobby, feeling really bad."

"Oh…" I had hit a brick wall and misinterpreted what Izzy was trying to say back in the Deadly Web exhibition. Yes, it probably was still a bit of a setup – but the whole thing about Noah apparently liking me was most likely a large part of it. "I guess I should go and see her in a few minutes. I'm just waiting on someone right now."

"Well… we'll be going back to the hotel before long so… eh, I dunno."

"Oh, I'll be going straight there anyway – I bumped into an old friend earlier and she's headed there as well."

"You ready to go Emma?" I heard Stephanie call from some distance away.

"Yep, just need to do something else first." I called back, standing up. "So you said Izzy's in the lobby, right?"

"Yep." Noah replied.

"Okay then." I walked out of the room and followed the signs to the gift shop, which was connected to the lobby.

As soon as I got to the lobby, I saw that sure enough, Izzy was slouched in a corner of the room, looking quite sad. I walked over to her and sat myself down, my back against the wall.

Izzy didn't say anything, either ignoring me because of what happened earlier, or she hadn't noticed me yet. I had to go first.

"I'm sorry for what happened earlier." I eventually said. "You didn't do anything – I was the one at fault. I misinterpreted what you were trying to say as something completely different, when I should have let you finish."

It was silent for about a minute, and I found myself looking at the fish tank down the hallway, about six or less feet away from us. It seemed to be a pretty good one, with other people who passed by stopping to look at it. They all seemed impressed; some even laughing.

I looked back over at Izzy, but she still hadn't moved. If anything, she was probably still processing what I had just said.

I couldn't wait any longer – Stephanie had just come through from the gift shop, a massive, buff guy right behind her.

"Oh, there you are!" She exclaimed as soon as she saw me. "We gotta get to that hotel as soon as possible, so are you okay to take us there now?"

"Yeah, sure, just… waiting for a couple more people to show up." I replied. "It's getting late anyway, so I guess we'll all be going back."

"Alright, that's all good. Oh yeah, Emma, this is Ryan." Stephanie gestured to the guy behind her.

"What's up?" Ryan, called, waving.

Soon enough, Noah and Owen came out, and we all started to head back to the hotel. Stephanie and I were at the front, the three guys in the middle, and Izzy stayed quiet at the back. By then I was beginning to worry that she was possibly having second thoughts about me.

"So, Emma, what made you decide to go to Vegas?" Stephanie suddenly asked.

Simple answer. Alcohol. And a whole lot of other things along the way.

"It's a really long story, but you'll be able to sit through it all, right?"

"Well… I dunno, you might wanna tell us all about it when we get back to the hotel, if there's a lot to tell."

"I might just do that, actually."

Once we did arrive at the hotel, Stephanie and Ryan stayed on the ground floor to check in, while the rest of us went straight up to our rooms.

As we were going up in the elevator, I suddenly remembered something – I could finally charge my phone. I still had the charger stuffed in my bag, along with the top that Izzy had selflessly payed for.

The elevator then stopped at the eleventh floor, dinging as the doors opened. I quickly pulled out the room key from my pocket as we all walked out, going straight over to unlock the room.

Right then, I suddenly realized how tired I was. It had been a pretty big day, going all over the city. And all the dramas back at the shopping centre had worn me out a bit. I would have dumped my bag on the floor and just flopped onto the bed, but I didn't want to – we were most likely going down for dinner sooner or later. It looked about that time – the skies had clouded over, and the light was gradually fading as the minutes went by.

But that wasn't to say that it would be close to pitch black out there – various buildings had lit up, making it feel darker than it really was.

I put my bag down on the bed and opened the main compartment, grabbing my new charger from the top and zipping it closed again. I then sat down, starting to pry open the plastic packaging. Eventually after about ten seconds, I managed to get it open, and pulled the plain black cord out.

A thought struck me, and I stopped. I had the cord, but I didn't have anything to plug into the outlet. Or did I have one stowed away in my bag? There always were a few odd things in there, and most of the time I'd forget to take them out when using the bag.

Pulling my bag onto my lap, I started searching through it, looking in every single pocket – even one which was supposed to hold a drink bottle. I found a lip balm, a spare key to the house, a few coins, a small notebook, but no charger.

I looked over my shoulder, but Noah didn't seem to be in here. I'd either have to wait or try to find someone else who had a charger.

I reached into the front pocket again, and pulled out something I didn't expect to see – my watch, which I had lost a few days ago.

At last, a source of time.

I looked at the clock face, which appeared to read half past eight. I knew Las Vegas was three hours behind Ottawa… so that made it half past five here.

"Anyone want to join us for dinner?" I heard Bridgette call from down the hallway. "We're having pizza!"

No one replied for a few minutes, until I saw Owen thunder past outside.

"Oh man, pizza!" He said with a laugh. "I'm in!"

"Me too, me too!" Izzy yelled excitedly. She seemed to be back to her normal self.

I put the cord back down on the bed and walked out – charging my phone could wait for now.

Out in the hallway, Izzy and Owen were waiting by the elevators with Bridgette, Geoff and Courtney.

"Alright, that's four, five, six…" I heard Geoff mutter.

"Hey, where's Noah?" Izzy asked, looking around.

Good question. And I had no idea.

"Uh… I think I saw him go in there…" Owen said, pointing to the closed door of the bathroom. "I dunno, maybe not."

We all stood around for a minute, no one saying anything. Suddenly, the elevator dinged loudly, and I jumped back in surprise, as did the rest.

"Finally…" A familiar voice said.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Stephanie walk out of the middle elevator with Ryan right behind her, a large black suitcase in his left hand. They both stopped as soon as they saw us all standing around.

"Uh… hey." Ryan said awkwardly, waving. "Sorry about that, I guess."

"All good man, we just… weren't expecting the elevator to come up." Geoff replied, giving him a thumbs up.

The bathroom door then opened, startling us all again, and Noah walked out.

"Did… I miss something?" He asked, looking slightly unfazed

"Uh… not really?" Owen replied, looking away.

"We're having pizza for dinner!" Izzy put in, cackling.

"Meh. That's alright with me." Noah shrugged.

"Alright!" Geoff grinned. "So we'll head down there in forty-five. Give you all time to have a bit of a rest after today. Man, I can't wait for tomorrow though!"

Soon, I was back in the room, just lying on the bed. I didn't really have time for another sleep, but just lying there was probably good enough.

I wondered for a minute what we would be doing tomorrow. I was pretty sure that there was a lot more to see. And Izzy would probably drag the three of us around the city once again. Not literally, but that was sounding like what would happen.

But pizza for dinner? That sounded pretty good.

 **xx**

 **There we go, another chapter all polished off. Hopefully I'll get chapter 6 out on a decent day.**

 **Speaking of which, I have a little announcement to make.**

 **On the 15** **th** **(or 14** **th** **for some) I'll be going on a holiday, and where I'm staying at has no wifi, so I won't be able to update anything until the 24** **th** **or 25** **th** **at the absolute latest. However, I will try to get a chapter out on the 13** **th** **or 14** **th** **, so I won't leave you hanging xD**

 **Also, for those who know about the reviews problem that FF is having, feel free to PM me your review (if the PM system is still working) and keep doing that until this problem gets fixed… I hope it does get fixed.**

 **Anyway, until next time!**


	6. Chapter 6: Pizza and Past Lovers

**Hey guys!**

 **So, as promised, today is the update day for this. This chapter's got a lot of pizza involved… and something else… ;)**

 **I don't own Total Drama, or Ridonculous race. OCs in this fic are mine, but** _ **most of them**_ **are just filler characters.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 6 – Pizza and Past Lovers**

 **xx**

"Do you remember Sara Foley? Well… she's Sara Cahill now."

"Yeah I- wait, did she get married? Already?"

"No, no, her mom remarried a year ago."

"Ohhh…"

I was currently sitting on the side of my bed, with Stephanie leaning against the wall opposite. Behind me, Noah was lying stomach-down on his bed, reading through a textbook of some sort.

"Anyway… yeah, she's got another brother now, and he and Chet absolutely hate each other…"

"Oh no… that does not sound fun. So how did you get here then? I wanna know the whole story!"

"The whole story? Really?" I laughed, shaking my head. "This whole story is quite long…"

"Don't worry, you won't kill me with it. I'm game for a long story!"

So I started telling Stephanie the story, right from when I got the (first) phone call from Maria. I tried to include every single detail I could remember, but of course, there was a big chunk of memory missing from last night. At one point I had her keeled over on the floor, laughing about me waking up with Shane's shoes on.

Right as I was about to continue on from there, Izzy appeared at the doorway.

"You aren't… _really_ going home tonight, right Emma?" She asked.

Crap. I'd completely forgotten about that. _Was_ I going home tonight?

Well… it would be good to do that. But at the same time, it would probably be pretty hard to get there with no bookings for shuttles or taxis or all that. And tomorrow, when all the others seemed to be going home, I'd have it a lot easier. Now that I was already planning to join them for dinner, it seemed a bit stupid to leave straight after.

"No." I replied. "Of course not."

Izzy was silent for a few seconds before letting out a loud whoop.

"YEAH! Awesome!" She cheered, cartwheeling off. "Oh boy, tomorrow's gonna be fun!"

As of yet, I didn't know Izzy's definition of fun, so I had no idea what she had in store.

"Time for pizza, peeps!" Geoff shouted from what seemed to be the other end of the hallway – his voice was quite distant.

"You guys are all having pizza too?" Stephanie exclaimed.

"I take it that you are as well?" I said, standing up.

"Of course! The head chef at Pizza Rock is like a champion pizza maker or something so Ryan and I have gotta try that place out!"

"Okay! I guess you can come down with us if you want, unless you're planning on going later."

"Oh, no, we'll go now. I'm starving and could do with a good pizza."

"Come on guys, you're gonna miss out!" Owen called as he walked past outside.

I quickly grabbed the room key from the nightstand and ran out to the hallway, Stephanie not far behind me. After waiting for about half a minute, Noah walked out, and I shut the door, locking it.

A large group of people was waiting by the elevators, all chatting excitedly amongst themselves. I could already tell that tonight was going to be good. Especially now that I knew they did award winning pizzas at this place.

I waited at the edge of the group as more and more people went down. There were quite a lot – about twenty odd people. Eventually, after five minutes, the only people left (apart from myself) were Bridgette, Geoff and Izzy.

"Alright, let's go peeps!" Geoff shouted as the elevator on the far left opened. "Oh man, I hope they do good pizzas!"

"How about award winning pizzas?" I suggested as we got into the elevator.

"Wait, award winning pizzas?"

"Apparently."

"Then that makes it even better!"

Soon, we were on the ground floor and walking out of the hotel – Pizza Rock was apparently on the other side of the road.

"Oh, this is so awesome!" Izzy said excitedly. "Hey, how did you know they do award winning pizzas?"

"Stephanie told me just before we left." I replied. "But knowing that _does_ make me feel good about tonight."

"Yeah! Oh, I'm so happy you're not going home tonight! You'd miss out on all the stuff we'd do tomorrow!"

"I guess it was pretty crazy of me to think about doing that. I mean, there wouldn't really be much point in going out for dinner, and then racing to the airport to catch a flight home."

"Haha, that is crazy! Oops, gotta cross the road now!"

I looked ahead as we ran across the road, spotting the rest walking along the pavement. Tagging on at the back, it was only a minute until I looked up to the wall of a building and saw a massive black and white logo with the words 'PIZZA ROCK' on it in red.

As soon as I walked inside, the first scent that reached my nose was of course pizza. And it smelled delicious.

"Mmm… pizza…" Izzy mumbled, also taking it all in.

The restaurant was huge and completely packed, save for an odd few small tables and a longer group of tables on the right. And it seemed to be for us – all the others were already taking seats there.

I found myself at the end closest to the kitchen, with Izzy on my left and Bridgette sitting across from me. For once in my entire time of being in Las Vegas, I was genuinely excited for this. Well… the Mob Museum was also exciting, but I didn't end up looking around the whole place.

Two waiters and a waitress came over with piles of menus, and started handing them out. Izzy opened hers as soon as she got it, immediately going to the middle.

"Wow, there's so many pizzas to choose from!" She remarked, laughing.

I opened up the menu and slowly went through it, skimming over each page. On the front page, there were other dishes apart from pizza, but I'd already made up my mind to have a pizza.

"Guys, we're ordering a few meat and cheese boards for everyone to start off with." Bridgette said. "Is that alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's awesome!" Izzy replied with an excited grin. I just nodded with a small smile.

"Alright, cool! Have a look at it in the antipasti section if you want."

I turned the page in my menu, and came to a full page of pizzas. Some of them could even serve from two people up to six. For a while, I wasn't sure which one I would have.

But after barely a minute of staring at that page, one of them caught my eye. An award winning Italian style pizza with toppings such as asiago, mozzarella, prosciutto de Parma and several more.

I'd already made a decision on what I wanted, and I had only been here for a few minutes.

I put the menu back down and sat back, looking around. Kitty was probably going to kill me once she found out I went here - pizza was one of her favourite foods.

"Whoa, have you decided what you want already?" Izzy suddenly asked.

"Uh… yeah, pretty much." I replied. "What about you?"

"I dunno, there's a few that I like… but I gotta choose one! Ooh, I might get a drink too."

"I might get one myself." And this time, I was going for the non-alcoholic drinks. "Where is the drinks menu anyway?"

"Um… down the other end of the table or something? Izzy hasn't seen it either."

Leaning forward, I looked towards the other end of the table, but didn't really see any other menus apart from the food ones.

"There'll be one somewhere, I guess." I said, standing up. "I'll be right back."

I quickly walked over to the toilets and went inside. Coming back out a couple of minutes later, I was looking at a wall decal when I nearly bumped into someone.

"Ugh, watch it!" The person snapped.

That voice was familiar. Very familiar. I looked ahead to see that it was none other than Amy, her face covered in pizza toppings and her hair partially wet.

"What happened to you?" I asked, trying to hiding my amusement.

"Ask Samey over there!" Amy grumpily replied, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "I ordered her favourite pizza and look what she did to me!" She ran off into the bathroom, making sounds that very much sounded like fake crying.

Whatever had happened, it seemed to be something good. I looked around to see where Sammy was, and found her sitting at a table near the front of the restaurant, looking slightly unsure.

I eventually decided to go back to my seat – and just in time, because a couple of waitresses were going around and taking drink orders.

"Hey Emma, here's the drink menu!" Izzy said as I sat down, lightly tossing a long, rectangular menu in front of me. "Izzy's gonna get a lemonade!"

I quickly opened the menu and went to the back page, where non-alcoholic drinks usually were. I found fruit juices, sodas, hot drinks, but neither appealed to me right then. That is, until I saw a small selection of iced teas at the bottom. Lemon, peach, mango, strawberry… strawberry sounded interesting.

"Emma!" Izzy hissed. "You got a drink yet?"

"Yeah, I've got one." I replied, putting my menu down as a tall blonde waitress came round to my side of the table.

After drinks were ordered, packs of cards were handed down the table – Uno cards to be specific. I can't even remember the amount of times Kitty forced me to play that game when she was eight or nine.

"Oh, I haven't played this game before!" Izzy said with a laugh.

Wait, what?

"You haven't played Uno?" Geoff exclaimed, sitting across from her. "Dang, and I thought you had… anyway, a few peeps brought these along, so we're gonna do a few games now while we wait."

Tonight was getting more and more interesting. And one thing was for sure – teaching Izzy how to play Uno looked like a really tough job.

Geoff quickly dealt out the cards – seven for each of us – and then came the presumably difficult process of explaining the game to Izzy.

"Alright… so you got seven cards, and you can't show anyone." He began, holding up his own cards, yet not showing them to us. "There's… four colours of cards, just like there's four suits in normal cards."

"Yep." Izzy nodded, going through her cards.

"Most of the cards have numbers on them – from zero to nine. When you put a… red seven or something down, you can also put a blue, yellow or green seven down with it. Or another red, if you've got it. Then there's special cards. The one with the circle that has a line going through it – that makes the next person miss a turn."

Maybe I had overestimated it. Izzy seemed to be going fine with it… so far. I still had no idea what would happen later on.

A few minutes later, while Geoff was going through the process of winning with Izzy, our drinks came. Bridgette had also ordered a strawberry iced tea, as well as another blonde girl sitting nearby with unusually large breasts for such a small frame. I wasn't too surprised – I knew a few girls at my college with the same problem.

"Alright, Izzy's ready!" Izzy said, fanning her cards out.

"Should we spread out a bit so it's not so easy to see each other's cards?" Bridgette asked. "I just almost saw Geoff's is all…"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea." Geoff replied, looking up from his cards.

Bridgette and I then shuffled closer to the head of the table, which I only just managed, as the couch seat I was on ended about four inches away from the corner of the table.

I picked up my cards and had a quick look at them – two blue eights, a blue zero, a wild card, a red draw two, a green five, a yellow one and a yellow skip.

"Alright, let's do this peeps!" Geoff said, grabbing the card from the top of the pile and flipping it over – a green six. "You first, Bridge!"

I looked up, suddenly spotting two waiters going around the table, taking orders for meals.

"Guys, I think it's time to order...?" I said slowly, putting my cards back down.

"Oh, whoops." Geoff put his cards down and quickly grabbed the menu. "What was it again...?"

Once we'd all ordered, it was back to the game. Izzy got a pepperoni, Geoff went for the New Yorker, while Bridgette ordered a vegetarian pizza.

I looked over to the toilets, having not seen Amy come out of there yet. I turned to the other end of the restaurant to see if she came out before, just as a couple of people entered - a guy and a girl.

My heart sank and a lump started forming in my throat as I focussed on the guy. Those blue eyes, that smooth dirty blond hair... it was the weasel himself. And Penelope was right next to him, her wavy brown hair tumbling down her shoulders.

Oh crap. Times two.

"Izzy!" I hissed, slouching slightly as they walked past. "Can I swap seats with you?"

"Why?" Izzy asked, just as she seemed to spot Jake and Penelope. "Oh..." She lowered her voice. "Is that guy the one who... cheated on you or something?"

"Yep, and I don't want either of them to know I'm here."

"Okay... yeah, we should swap."

"What's going on?" Bridgette asked as Izzy ducked under the table.

"Emma's ex is here or something." Geoff told her.

"Oh dear…"

I quickly shuffled further to my left, stopping once Izzy popped up at where I was originally sitting. My night went from great to almost terrible in the space of only a minute. I just had to lay low and keep on doing whatever I would be doing.

"Oh man, I think you're not the only one in this." Geoff said, looking down towards the other end of the table.

I leaned forward to do the same thing, and saw Alejandro sitting on the other side a few tables down, his expression nervous and tense at the same time. I hated to think about it, but something told me he had a bit of history with Penelope.

Trying to get my mind off the troubles at hand, I took a sip of my drink and picked up my cards again, just as Izzy put a green seven in the discard pile.

Even though I had unwillingly played Uno many, many times, I did learn a few good strategies to get a win. It all depended on which card I'd play when.

Right now though, it was either my green five or the wild card. So I put down the green five.

Whilst Geoff was looking through his cards, I stole a quick glance at Jake and Penelope, who had taken a seat at a table not far away at all. So far, it seemed that neither had noticed me, which was good.

At another table right behind them though, Stephanie was constantly looking over her shoulder – I had a feeling that she knew what would happen if either Jake or Penelope saw me.

Right then, Penelope stood up and walked over to the toilets, brushing a strand of hair out of her face with her left hand. And one thing I noticed – she was sporting a diamond ring on her ring finger.

Oh my god. They were engaged.

"Emma, you alright?" Izzy asked, snapping me back to reality.

"Uh… yeah, sort of…" I replied, sighing.

Never had I been in a situation like this. Well… I sort of had, really. There were Maria's two ex-boyfriends, Thomas and Mark – each of them she very nearly bumped into while walking around town with me and a couple of others… both on completely different occasions, of course.

Then, there was a stupid jerk of a guy (whose name I'll never remember) who had a major crush on Kitty, yet she hated him with a burning passion. Funnily enough, he was too dumb to realize it until Kitty purposefully gave herself a detention by throwing half a potato salad onto this guy's very expensive laptop. She was the talk of the school for an entire week after that.

But I hadn't been stuck in _this_ role before. And it wasn't a good feeling. At all.

"Hey guys, let's just forget about all that and continue on with the game." Geoff said, putting a couple of threes down – one green, the other yellow. "Pizzas are _probably_ gonna take a while, since this places is pretty packed."

The game went on for another ten minutes, and by that point, pizzas started coming out, yet they were for people at the other end of the table. It would still be a minute or two yet – I had found out earlier that there was a total of somewhere around twenty-two people, including me.

"Uno." I declared as I put down a blue nine.

"Oh man, here we go!" Geoff laughed, tossing a red nine onto it. "Who's got something to stop her?"

I looked down at my draw four wild card and said nothing. I was unstoppable. Unless either Geoff or Izzy had a draw two.

Bridgette then put down a red reverse. Geoff made me skip a turn. Izzy changed the colour to yellow with a wild card. Both Bridgette and Geoff ended up drawing a card each.

All I could do was smirk as I carefully placed my last card on top of the pile.

"Aw, what?" Izzy mockingly complained, laughing. "Good one! Why didn't I keep my wild card for later?"

"Good game peeps, good game." Geoff said, just as a pizza was placed in front of him. "And it's dinner time!" He cheered, throwing his three remaining cards onto the pile.

Bridgette and Izzy did the same with theirs, and I grabbed the pile and started shuffling the cards for whenever the next game would be.

"Who brought these along?" I asked once I was done.

"Uh… DJ, I think." Geoff replied.

"I don't think I've… met him yet."

"Oh, s'cool, I'll take them to him."

I passed the cards over as a waitress reached over and put a large plate with a pizza down in front of me. It looked absolutely delicious. I was starving all of a sudden, immediately grabbing a piece and putting it on a smaller plate, which had arrived some time earlier.

"Oh my gosh Emma, that looks so good!" Izzy exclaimed.

"It _was_ one of the award-winners." I told her. "There wasn't any point in trying one of the other normal pizzas."

"Aw, now I wish I ordered one. But pepperoni's one of my favourites so… yeah!"

I looked up to suddenly see Jake run past, mouthing 'oh crap' as he headed for the door, bolting outside. I just brushed it aside, presuming he'd left something behind somewhere.

"Oh. Well look who's here." A voice said, so familiar it made me feel sick.

No, no, no…

I shifted my gaze over to where Penelope was, but she strutted straight past. She was headed for Alejandro.

"Back _off_." I heard Heather snap.

Knowing that I was probably safe for now, I silently started eating my piece of pizza. All I had to do was ignore all the happenings and I would be fine. Unless someone decided to be stupid enough to point me out.

"Are you going to be alright?" Bridgette asked in a lowered voice, sounding concerned.

"I think so." I replied. "I just have to… stay quiet, I guess."

"Okay. I think Heather did catch wind of how you're involved, so don't be surprised if she diverts the attention over to you. It's something she'd typically do."

"Oh…" That didn't sound good.

"But for now just… keep on doing what you're doing."

I nodded and took another bite of my pizza. Although it tasted amazing, I couldn't really focus on that, because of how much I was at risk. It was all a matter of chance.

Then again, Penelope could spot me without having to be told that I was here.

I heard bits and pieces of what was going on down the other end of the table, but it sounded mostly like an insult showdown between Penelope and Heather. They seemed to be keeping each other busy, and I hoped it stayed like that until they ran out of puff.

Five minutes on, and they were still going at it, with Alejandro interfering at odd intervals. By then I started to think it was possible that Penelope had noticed me, but had no intention of stepping down from her argument with Heather.

"Man, when are they going to stop?" Geoff wondered, looking over his shoulder. "People wanna eat their pizza here!"

"I… don't know. It's getting kind of tiring to listen to though." Bridgette replied. "So it will hopefully be-"

Suddenly, laughter burst out from the other end of the table. Something had happened… whatever it was.

"What is it, what is it?" Izzy asked excitedly. "Izzy wants to know!"

Geoff got up and went down to see what was going on, and came back a few minutes later laughing.

"Oh man, oh _man_! That's good!" He remarked, shaking his head.

"What is it?" All three of us girls asked at once.

"Well that… Penelope girl was getting on everybody's nerves. In fact, Duncan's more than anyone. So he just got up and… told a bit of a white lie… but he said that… what's his name… oh, Jake was out on the other side of the street talking to another girl."

I couldn't help but laugh – that was pretty good.

"So Penelope was outta here?" Izzy questioned, cackling.

"You bet! Man, wish I'd seen it happen though!"

The next… however many minutes were much more relaxed. No sign of Jake or Penelope for the entire time, and I actually got to enjoy my pizza.

Eventually, we had all finished, and were headed back to the hotel. Which of course, was only across the road.

I walked near the front, with several people I didn't recognise further ahead of me. It was a still night, despite the clouds passing overhead.

Footsteps suddenly reached my ears, just as Izzy ran past, skidding to a stop and stepping back a couple of feet to join me.

"There's something Izzy forgot to tell you." She said, turning around to face the road as we waited for a gap in the traffic.

"Okay? What's it about?" I asked.

"Noah. You see… well, I dunno what'll happen with this tomorrow… but I just thought I'd say that he's never had a girlfriend before."

My head snapped up in surprise. Really?

"Never?" I repeated as we finally crossed the road.

"Nuh-uh. Never _ever_. I know, it's so crazy, but… that's what's happened!"

"Emma! You okay?" A voice called from some distance away.

I looked to my right and saw Stephanie standing by the hotel entrance.

"Yeah, it's alright now, I guess." I called back in reply. "How were your guys' pizzas?"

"Oh, it was the BEST pizza ever! Ryan and I both had margheritas, and it was the only one made with a completely different flour to the rest. It was so worth it though! How about yours? Wait, hold on, I'm just gonna come over so we don't have to yell at each other!"

I laughed as Stephanie jogged over, stopping a few feet away.

"So… how was it?" She asked.

"Well… it was really great, but it was hard to enjoy it with everything else going on in the background." I replied, sighing.

"Yeah… I saw all that stuff happen. Downright crazy though. I didn't know little old Penny had a bit of history with that guy."

"Izzy's just gonna go back inside!" Izzy said quickly, running off.

I looked around, then noticing that we were the only ones outside, save the odd few people passing by.

"I guess we should be going inside too." Stephanie eventually said after about thirty seconds of silence.

"Yeah, we should." I started walking towards the hotel, checking my watch along the way.

Ten thirty in Ottawa, seven thirty here. I was still adjusting to the time zone – it definitely felt like it was much later. And I was quite tired.

Once we entered the lobby, there were a few people gathered around the counter, talking with the receptionist about something.

"I'm gonna have to wait here – Ryan bumped into one of his friends from college, so they're still busy talking at the pizza restaurant." Stephanie said, walking over to stand by the door.

I looked back and nodded in reply, stopping at the elevators and pressing the up button.

Suddenly sensing a nearby presence, I turned around and saw Bridgette standing there.

"Something's wrong on our floor." She said, pointing to the roof. "I don't know what it is yet, but there's a bit of a culprit… and the receptionist described her as a girl with brown hair and dark brown eyes."

Crap. That was the exact description of Penelope. She wouldn't do anything that bad, right?

The elevator in the middle opened and we got in, then going up to the eleventh floor. Once up there, I heard a few panicked voices as the doors opened. Whatever _had_ happened, it didn't really sound that great.

I ran out of the elevator, nearly crashing into Izzy along the way.

"Emma! There you are!" She exclaimed as another elevator dinged. "You gave Noah your room key before he left to go back, right?"

"Yep." I replied. Just before we were all about to leave, Noah had to quickly go back, as he remembered he had to call his mother to tell her he'd bought something for his sister's birthday. "What about it?"

"Well the good thing is that he's still got it."

"And the bad thing…?"

"Someone took the spare key from reception and locked him in there!"

"Wait, what?" I shook my head in astonishment.

It really was worse than I thought. And Penelope sounded like the exact person who'd pull that type of stunt off.

Several questions were running around in my mind. Was Jake involved too? Did Penelope actually know I was here? And more importantly, where was she?

I had no time to think – everything had suddenly spiralled down to chaos. I spun around to look for Bridgette, but she was gone, and in her place was the answers to my second and third questions.

"Hello, Emma." Penelope said with a smirk, crossing her arms.

Oh crap.

 **xx**

 **Phew, that end scene was so much fun to write. Oh, sorry, sorry, left you guys hanging xD but I was stuck for ideas, I guess.**

 **Next chapter won't be up until somewhere around the 30** **th** **or 31** **st** **at the latest, so stay tight and I'll stop you all from hanging. Lol.**

 **Anyway, until next time!**


	7. Chapter 7: Pink Pursuit

**Hi guys!**

 **Well, back from my two-week trip, and as promised, here is the next chapter. A lot of stuff happens here… so sorry if it gets confusing**

 **I don't own Total Drama or Ridonculous Race. OCs in this fic are mine, but they're mostly filler characters.**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 7 – Pink Pursuit**

 **xx**

"Whoa-ho, back off!" Izzy snarled from behind me. "Why are you here anyway? Go eat your cold pizza!"

"Oh, we're still waiting for ours." Penelope said matter-of-factly, shrugging. " _But_ … since I'm up _here_ at a pretty good time, I think I'll be staying for a bit."

I couldn't move – I literally felt like I was frozen in place. I couldn't even talk.

I knew that there were others nearby to help if necessary, but I wished that Kitty was here. She hated Penelope more than anyone, and was still waiting for the day when she could knock her down. Now would have been perfect… but her being back in Ottawa didn't help at all.

"What's wrong, Emma?" Penelope asked, cocking her head. "Cat got your tongue?"

Cat got my tongue? Yeah right. Heard of stage fright, Penny? It's kind of like this. That was what I wanted to say, and I knew she absolutely _despised_ being called Penny. But it wasn't what came out.

"N-no, of course not…" I stammered. Seriously? That's the best I could do?

"Oh, so you're _not_ trembling in fear. Wow. Meek little Em's not scared!"

I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists. Just like me for her, Penelope had an annoying nickname for me.

"What do you mean _meek_?" I demanded, my confidence suddenly yet slowly coming back. "That was high school. Long time ago now."

"I _know_ that, Emma. What, do you think I'm dumb?"

Yes. Yes I do. Truth to be told, Penelope actually wasn't the brightest crayon in the box… not to say that she was the absolute dumbest – there still was a bit of a smart spark there. But that may have changed over the years gone by.

"Uh…" I began, mentally slapping myself for not saying what I should have said.

"Yeah, didn't think so. Oh, hey, guess what? I'm studying to be a doctor in college, just like I always said I would."

"Nice. Cut people open and remove stuff. You must find that fun." I admit it – I was playing dumb to try and fool Penelope. I didn't know if it'd work, but I was enjoying it.

"Ew, no, that's not what it's _all_ about. Gee, you're just as clueless as you were in ninth grade." Penelope put her hands on her hips and looked around, raising an eyebrow. "Hey, where's your little rat of a sister?"

Little rat of a sister? Kitty would love that nickname. Not.

"You know what? You're lucky that she's not here, or she'd have you on the ground in seconds if you called her a little rat." I replied, crossing my arms. "And your face probably wouldn't be looking so great afterwards."

" _Right_. Actually, just gonna change the topic – why are _you_ here? Still crying over Jake?"

"Oh, you bet I am _not_." Finally, said something decent.

"Don't lie to me. I know you're here to try get him back. Good luck with that though – look what he gave me _last week_!" Penelope waved her left hand in front of my face, the diamond ring sparkling in the light.

"I saw that earlier. And no, I'm not lying. You know I don't lie." I looked up and sighed – I had to tell her my real reason for being here, and I knew she'd be laughing. "If you really must know, I came here by accident."

"Oh, really now?"

"It's amazing what people do when they're drunk."

Penelope's eyes widened in surprise, and a slowly growing smile started forming.

"Nice work, Emma. _Nice work_. I'd never imagine someone travelling all the way to the other side of the continent, just because they're drunk. Seriously, that never happens."

"But it's true!" Izzy piped up from behind me. "Wanna know the story?"

It was awkwardly quiet for a few seconds. I looked over my shoulder to see Izzy glaring at Penelope, her expression grim.

"Can someone get me out of here?" I heard Noah yell from the locked room. "Talking about stuff is not helping!"

"What happened to him?" Penelope asked.

Huh?

"Did you… not lock it?" I exclaimed.

"You think I'm _that_ low? I'd never lock someone I don't even know in a hotel room. Let alone someone I did know."

Now I was downright confused. If it wasn't Penelope, then who locked Noah in? For a little while, I didn't know what to say. But I didn't have to worry – Izzy spoke up.

"Some weirdo managed to get the spare key from reception, and locked the room _with_ Noah still inside." She explained.

"And whoever did it has… either left the hotel or is still here somewhere." I put in, eventually finding my words.

"Huh. Well, I'm just going to leave now – there will probably be a pizza waiting back at the restaurant." Penelope huffed, turning on her heel and walked over to the elevators.

I sighed and turned to Izzy, who was looking up at the roof, seeming to be thinking. She suddenly gasped and sprinted past. I turned around to see her skidding to a stop beside Penelope.

"Did you see anyone down there?" She asked. "Like… I dunno, someone kinda shifty?"

Penelope's brow creased and she looked away for a few seconds.

"You know, I _did_ see someone running out of one of the elevators laughing about something. It sounded like… a bit of an evil laugh, but she had dark brown hair tied up into a ponytail." She replied.

There we go, brown hair.

"And she had something in her hand. I couldn't tell what it was though."

And most likely, that was the key.

"Coolios! Thanks!" Izzy ran back and pulled me into her and Owen's room. "We'll get you out soon, Noah!" She yelled. "Just gotta find this key."

Once we were inside, Izzy went over to sit on the bed closest to the door, which I presumed was hers. Owen was curled up on the far bed, looking unsure.

"So I guess I should tell you, but at first I _did_ think that Penelope was the one at fault." I said, sitting down on the floor. "But now… I have absolutely no idea."

"Izzy thinks that the only way to find this person is… well, look for them!" Izzy laughed. "Well, look all around the hotel… and even that's big!"

It was silent for a few minutes, with Izzy staring out the window and me looking at the floor, both of us thinking.

Then, Owen piped up.

"What about Dawn?" He suggested. "She's here, right?"

"Oh! Of course!" Izzy exclaimed. "And yeah, she is here! I saw her outside that shopping centre before we went in! Wow, it's like everyone we knew back at high school is here!"

"Who's Dawn?" I asked.

"Oh, she was in the grade below us! Hey, I'm gonna go find her right now!" Izzy leapt up and cartwheeled out of the room. "I'll be back soon!"

If Izzy was planning on looking around the entire city for this Dawn person, then I didn't even know if she would be gone for five minutes or fifty. Whatever the case, she seemed to know where she was going with it.

I eventually decided to go out to the hallway and sat down just outside Owen and Izzy's room, staring into space.

I still didn't quite get that Penelope wasn't the culprit. It seemed like she would do something as such, but I had probably gotten the wrong impression. Just like me being meek, it was back in the high school days – she enjoyed locking classrooms and then managing to pin the blame on someone else. Luckily, I was never targeted for that… which still surprises me to this day, as I knew Penelope would _love_ to do that to someone like me.

"Where's Izzy gone?" Bridgette called from down the hallway.

I looked to my right and saw her poking her head out of a door further down.

"She's just gone to find someone." I called back in reply. "Someone called Dawn, I think."

"Oh great, nature freak." Noah grumbled from behind the locked door.

Bridgette then ran down to join me, looking slightly relieved.

"Dawn's an excellent person to have in this situation." She said, sitting down next to me. "She's got a gift of reading auras."

Reading auras?

"If you don't mind me asking… but how will she be able to help us?" I asked.

"Oh. Well, if this person is still at the hotel, then she'll be able to look at the auras of other people here, and see which ones seem… uh, bad enough to lock someone in, I guess."

"I… still don't quite get it, but I guess I'll wait until Izzy gets back."

I looked at the time on my watch – it was ten to eight. All that drama happened in twenty minutes? It seemed to go by so quickly.

Fifteen minutes later, and Izzy wasn't back. Thirty minutes, still no Izzy. Forty-five, one hour, an hour fifteen, and still nothing.

I groaned and slowly stood up – sitting on the floor for that long wasn't really the greatest idea.

Izzy was most likely not going to be back for another hour more. There seemed to be no sign of her coming up in the next few minutes.

Right then, one of the elevators dinged.

"Okay, you know what? I've had enough!" A voice shouted as the door opened.

I turned to the elevators as Sammy stormed out of the far one, going down the hallway and taking an immediate left. Amy then came out of the elevator a fair bit slower, looking quite confused.

"Ugh, what for?" She asked, going around the corner.

"Is it really not that obvious?"

Their voices slowly became distant, but I got a feeling that Sammy was finally standing up to her sister, which was great. But Izzy was still going to be a while more.

Just as I was starting to think that she was going to be even longer than that, the middle elevator signalled its arrival, then opening a few seconds later.

"Hey-hey guys, we're here!' Izzy called, running out. "What did I miss?"

I walked over to the elevators, just as a short, pale skinned girl with long, silvery blonde hair stepped out of the elevator. She did look like an aura reader – that was definite.

"You must be Emma." She said suddenly. "And your aura seems… to be a bit… jumbled right now. A lot of things must have happened."

Wow. That was pretty accurate.

"Uh… yeah, a lot has happened." I said, looking away for a few seconds. "But that's probably not important right now."

"So you see, there's some weirdo somewhere in this hotel – or even somewhere in the city – that's got the spare key to unlock that room." Izzy explained, pointing towards the locked door. "Nobody's seen them – except for Penelope."

I eventually caught on to the fact that Dawn had been told the whole story as she was walking back with Izzy, right from when Jake and Penelope showed up at the pizza restaurant.

"Hmm…" Dawn folded her arms and looked up to the ceiling. "If this person is still at the hotel, we can… _try_ to find them. But of course, it is no easy task."

"If we do that… we could get more people to look in different areas of this place." I suggested as the far elevator dinged and opened, Alejandro then walking out afterwards. "I don't know if that'll do much, but that's just my two cents."

Both Izzy and Dawn seemed to be thinking about that. It was possible that it wouldn't be the best bet, yet something told me that it would be pretty alright.

"That… that could work." Izzy eventually said, nodding. "I dunno who there is that'll be okay with doing it and who won't be okay."

I hadn't really seen this side of Izzy before, and it was quite surprising. But then again, the situation was pretty serious – no stuffing around with this one.

"I believe so as well." Dawn put in. "But first, like you said, we will have to find who's willing to do this. Of course, there will be some who won't want to."

About ten minutes later, which went by painfully slow, we were gathered in the hallway with all the people who had volunteered to help. Geoff, Courtney, Bridgette, Gwen, Leshawna, Heather (surprisingly), Duncan, and a few others who I hadn't met before – Cody, Beth and Trent.

"Alright guys, we're gonna split up into pairs and look around this whole place for this person." Izzy instructed, standing in the middle of the makeshift circle. "So, uh… I dunno who you wanna-" An elevator dinging cut her off.

I looked over my shoulder to see that Penelope was back, phone in hand and panting.

"I saw this… person again." She said, roughly flicking a strand of hair out of her face.

"Ooh, got any more details?" Izzy asked.

"Brown eyes, wearing mostly pink clothes… and sort of short. Or close to average height."

"Hmm… hey, you got time?"

"Heaps. What, do you want me to help out here or something?"

"Yeah! I guess it's better having someone who knows what this person looks like. Oh, where did you see them?"

"Just in the hallway on the fourth floor – but she was out of there as soon as she saw me. I have no idea where she is now."

This was going to be a long night. And I didn't know how long this would even take us.

"Okay…" Izzy tapped her chin and looked up at the roof.

It wasn't long before we were split up into pairs and spread out around the hotel. There was a bit of trouble deciding the pairs, but eventually Izzy just put random people together. And unfortunately for me, I was stuck with Penelope. But I had to live with it, and get on with the task at hand.

The hotel was, in fact, way bigger than I thought. There was an air bridge of some sort that led to another tower, which was part of the hotel.

And then there was the floors themselves. Each pair would be looking on different floors, but the sheer size of it made the job much harder. It would take up a lot of time just to walk around the whole floor.

I was on the fourth floor, looking into a room which seemed to be what this person was staying in – there was a fairly odd looking pink dress which looked more like a figure skating outfit lying on the king sized bed inside.

"Is that the outfit you saw on this person earlier?" I asked Penelope, who was just standing to the side, staring ahead blankly.

"Something similar." She replied simply with a shrug.

I sighed and peered inside the room again, when a thought struck me.

"What is this room doing open anyway?" I muttered, looking around for a key.

"I don't know." Penelope said, shrugging again and pulling her phone out.

Was she really being like this on purpose? Because I couldn't stand it. I spun around on my heel and glared at her.

"If you're going to spend your time on your phone and not helping in a situation where you're actually _needed_ , then I might as well lock _you_ up somewhere." I told her, the anger bubbling up inside me. "Oh, and I bet you'll want to sleep after today, whatever you got up to. Well I'm not going to let you do that until this massive problem is solved."

Penelope was looking at me as if I'd lost my mind. _Really_?

"What's gotten into you?" She asked, rolling her eyes.

Time to pull out the big guns.

"Oh, nothing. If you _were_ wondering, I really shot up to near the top of the ladder back at school."

"What ladder? Ladder of losers?"

I laughed humourlessly. "Nope. Here's a clue or two. I got top scholar at the end of grade twelve. And I'm studying to be a lawyer. Already did a couple of advanced papers in that earlier this year."

Penelope's jaw dropped open and her eyes were almost as wide as saucers. _Now_ she was shocked. And it looked absolutely hilarious – but I remained calm.

"But- you… what?" She seemed to be lost for words.

"Come on, lets' go find this person." I walked off to the left, headed to the elevators. I looked back and saw Penelope still standing there, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. "You want me to drag you the rest of the way?" I was having a lot of fun with this.

"Ergh… uh, okay, I'm coming." She eventually said, running up to join me.

Ten minutes and two floors later, there was still no luck. And it was somewhat frustrating. All the while, the same thing was stuck in my mind – why was that room open for anyone to see?

Suddenly, after getting out of an elevator and onto the second floor, a flash of pink caught my eye. I looked to my right, but there was nothing. The person had either gone around the corner or into another elevator.

Without telling Penelope, I ran over to the other end of the elevators, then stopping to peer down the adjoining hallway. The anticipation was suddenly washed away – it was someone wearing pink (with a purplish tinge to it), but it was a male with blond hair, looking ahead for some reason. So much for all that excitement.

"What are you doing?" Penelope hissed.

I sighed and stepped back, checking to make sure this other person hadn't noticed us.

"I just saw a bit of pink… but it wasn't who we were looking for." I said quietly in reply. "Well… I don't know, you have a look."

Rolling her eyes, Penelope walked over to where I was originally standing and looked at the person, cocking her head at the same time.

"They're… wearing similar clothes." She said, her voice lowered. "Only a male version of it, of course. I guess we could ask this guy some questions – he might know something about all this."

Was she actually considering asking a complete stranger who potentially had absolutely nothing to do with this mess some questions?

Well… we were also looking for another stranger, so it sort of did make sense.

"Okay… I'll just be in the bathroom." I said, walking across the hallway to a bathroom.

Coming out five minutes later, I waited by the elevators, hearing bits and pieces of the conversation around the corner – the guy seemed to be French, or French-Canadian for that matter.

Just as Penelope came back round, an idea struck me.

"He claims to know nothing, but I'm not too sure." She said with a shrug. "We'll… check this floor out anyway."

"Actually, I think we should check the ground floor."

"Ground floor?"

"Well, there's going to be a lot of people down there right now. And who knows, this person might be out on the street."

"That's… uh, yeah, good point."

Back in the elevator, I started to think about the open room again, and this other guy being on the second floor. Was he associated with the other person? And was that open room not theirs, but maybe someone else's, and they were being framed?

Once we were on the ground floor, I suddenly realized that this was actually brilliant – there were a lot of people milling around, the majority of them being in the casino. And it was very likely that this person was somewhere close by.

But then there was a bad point. Due to the amount of people, it was quite hard to actually find anything – not to mention the pink that seemed to be all over the place.

I was beginning to think that this was potentially not the greatest idea when I spotted a flash of green and ginger rush past.

"Izzy!" I called out. "Any luck?"

Izzy promptly skidded to a stop a few feet away and turned back round to face me.

"Nope, not yet!" She replied, having to raise her voice over the noise. "What about you?"

"Well… we found a blond haired guy on the second floor, also wearing the same pink." I began, walking over. "But… he claimed to have nothing to do with all this."

"Okay… I dunno, this is getting kinda hard."

"Well, we _are_ in Las Vegas. But I was also thinking that this person could possibly be out on the streets. If they are, then it'll definitely be not that far away."

"Maybe… Dawn's just looking around on the first floor still, so Izzy's gonna be waiting here for a little bit."

I turned around, only to realize that I had now lost Penelope. The only place she could be was outside.

"Well I'll… be going outside now, so if you want to meet us out there or something, feel free." I said before running off.

Soon enough, I found the exit, with Penelope standing right next to it. We headed outside, where it was even more crowded – there were people _everywhere_. And the buildings were all lit up with their neon lighting, making the streets below them darker.

This was going to be difficult.

"Where to now?" Penelope shouted over all the noise.

"I don't know." I replied, having to raise my own voice as well. "Maybe get away from the crowds first. That is… if we can get away."

It seemed to be easier said than done. But we were out of the crowd and on a fairly empty street corner within minutes.

I had to admit, I probably should have thought over this a bit more before actually doing it. Sure, it was quite dark, despite all the lights above us, but pink stood out really easy, and there was a lot of it. Neon pink wasn't what we were looking for though.

The next few minutes was spent slowly walking around the nearby streets, coming across the occasional crowd every now and then. Lots of people tried to get us to join in on whatever they were doing, but we were gone before they could say anything else.

Our search suddenly expanded a lot, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of Fremont Street, which was absolutely packed. I quickly followed Penelope to a small clearing outside ABC stores, and heard a nearby yell soon after.

"HEY! That's mine, you bitch! Great, can't buy anything now!"

I frantically looked around, trying to find the source of the yell, and locked eyes with someone I didn't think I'd see again.

"Emma! There you are!" Arlene shouted, running over from a small group of people. "Some bitch just took my bank card!"

"Did you get to see what they looked like?" I asked, noticing that she had changed out of last night's clothes and was now wearing a hot pink tube top and a tiny denim miniskirt.

"Yep, good clear image – brown hair, which was tied back, brown eyes and pinkish-purplish clothes."

"Pinkish-purplish clothes?" This was good.

"Yeah!"

I looked at Penelope for confirmation and she nodded. This same person that locked Noah up was definitely close. Where they were exactly, we still had to find out.

"Okay… well, she's locked someone up back at the hotel I'm staying at, and we've been looking for her for… quite some time now." I told Arlene, who looked quite surprised by it.

"Really? She's getting around a lot… hey, I can help you guys find her!"

After a quick briefing of what had happened earlier, we were on the road again. Searching the rest of Fremont Street proved to be fruitless, and we had progressed to The Strip.

It was ten o'clock, and the tiredness was starting to set in on me. But I had to keep going, if I wanted a decent place to sleep, _and_ a fully charged phone for tomorrow. I would have done it earlier, but I was too preoccupied with everything that happened, from the massive walk around the city with Izzy, Owen and Noah, to the dinner at Pizza Rock.

Halfway down The Strip, and still nothing. This was really starting to get pointless. This person was most likely pretty crafty if we still hadn't caught up to them yet.

Eventually, we were on a different road, which had several casinos and hotels on either side of it. And, just like the rest of the city, it was crowded.

Taking refuge outside the Golden Gate Casino, I looked to my right, and saw the Fremont Street Experience. Hopefully this wasn't taking us around in circles.

"Emma! Emma!" A voice called from some distance away. "What the heck is happening?"

I turned to my left, immediately spotting Stephanie running over, looking… quite shocked.

"Long story, but someone locked Noah up in his room, and… both of these two have seen this person." I replied, gesturing to Arlene and Penelope. "But Penelope's seen her twice."

"Whoa… that's pretty crazy. Seen them yet?"

"No, I haven't yet. And we've been searching around this place for… forty-five minutes now." I took a quick look at my watch – it was quarter past ten.

"OH, YEAH! JACKPOT!" A voice yelled from inside the casino.

Looking inside, I managed to spot a stocky brunette in what seemed to be some sort of police uniform on her knees and cheering loudly, the slot machine in front flashing with pretty much all colours of the rainbow and practically spewing money. She'd probably just won a massive prize, which was amazing.

"Hey, I think I know her!" Stephanie exclaimed.

Suddenly, I saw it. Wait, not it. Her.

A woman of fairly average height, if not shorter, stood just a few feet away from the police girl. She had brown hair, tied back into a ponytail. She was wearing mostly pink, and it looked exactly like what I had seen in that open room.

"That's her, that's her!" Penelope hissed, pointing at the woman.

Before I could say anything, the woman pushed the police girl clean out of the way and collected the rest of the oncoming cash in a large bag of some sort. It looked to be weighing down slightly with the amount that was coming in, but it seemed to have made no difference.

"Is she seriously just taking all that money for herself or what?" Arlene wondered, shaking her head.

No time to reply – the woman was suddenly on her feet, and she darted out the door, knocking both me and Penelope over in the process.

"What now?" Stephanie shouted, looking up to the sky. "Try catch her or something?"

I looked ahead, almost immediately spotting the woman somersaulting around the corner. There was no way none of us were able to do something like that.

"Stephanie, you said you possibly know her, right?" I said, standing up. "The person who actually won the money, that is."

"Yeah, I think I do. She's… a police cadet at some institute not far away from Toronto or something…" Stephanie replied, eventually trailing off.

"Okay…"

There was only one way to get this woman, and it was to go after her. Police cars could work, but it depended on where she'd gone off to, either onto The Strip or down a narrow side street. Then there was the option of chasing her down ourselves. The only problem there – I didn't think either of us were fit enough to be cartwheeling and somersaulting down a street. But I knew someone else who was.

"Somebody get the cops onto this mess – I'm going back to get Izzy." I informed the other three before running off as fast as I could, taking a tight turn down the Fremont Street Experience.

 **xx**

 **Well, there you have it. A pretty dramatic chapter, if I may say so myself.**

 **Next chapter I'm hoping to get up by next week – as most of you know I've got a set schedule for this (which I don't want to change), so there'll be a chapter coming next Sunday! Or Saturday… depending on your time zone. Lol.**

 **That aside… until next time!**


	8. Chapter 8: For What It's Worth

**Hey guys!**

 **Sorry for the late update, had a bad case of writers block throughout the whole week just about, and it's really put me behind schedule. But not to worry, I will update when I can right now!**

 **I don't own Total Drama, or Ridonculous race. OCs are mine, mostly just filler characters, yada yada, all that stuff. xD**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 8 – For What It's Worth**

 **xx**

I stood by the hotel entrance, leaning against a pillar and panting hard. I wasn't really much of a runner, so going all the way from the Fremont Street Experience to the Downtown Grand was quite a piece of work. And in jeans as well.

Heaving out a sigh, I looked around, noticing that it wasn't as crowded here as it was earlier. But that didn't worry me – what I really needed to know was if Izzy was nearby.

"Emma, what are you doing by yourself?" I heard a voice call from not far away. "Where's… what's her name?"

"Penelope?" I called back, looking to my left and spotting Courtney and Bridgette walking over. "She's outside a casino with a couple of others… and hopefully the police as well. There was a bit of a robbery there."

"Whoa…" Bridgette stopped in her tracks. "That's not good. Did you see the person?"

"Which one? Because I can say that the person we're looking for committed that robbery."

"Oh, really?"

"Right now though I really need Izzy – this person's quite athletic, if somersaults come into account there."

"Yep, that sounds like a job for Izzy." Courtney said, nodding. "But I… don't know where she is. I saw her not that long ago."

"Same here – just inside the hotel. Haven't seen her since though."

"Right… we're in Las Vegas and we can't find Izzy. That spells trouble."

"Isn't Dawn with her?" Bridgette asked, checking the time on her watch. "Oh god, it's half past ten…"

"Uh… I don't know." I replied, shaking my head. "When I saw Izzy, Dawn was still searching the first floor. I'm not too sure why, but maybe there was some sort of clue there."

"Oh… that's pretty confusing, I guess."

It was silent for a few minutes, and I took the time to think over what else could be done. And if Izzy wasn't anywhere nearby, there was only one way to do it.

"Okay… we're going to need a bit of backup – there's a few others back at this casino, but they'll need more, if the police aren't there yet."

"So… what, get everyone else out here and searching around the city?" Courtney asked.

"Pretty much. This person _is_ carrying a big bag of money – someone's prize money, by the way – but they could still have covered a lot of ground already, at the speed they were going."

"Alright, I think… everyone else is still inside, so we'll go in and get them, and maybe Izzy too, if she's in there."

It took a few minutes, but everyone who was helping out with the search was gathered on the street. And as it turned out, Izzy and Dawn were searching through the other tower, connected by the air bridge. Additionally, Alejandro and a guy called Tyler had joined in some time earlier.

I stepped into the middle of the clustered circle to explain everything that happened. Everyone was listening, even if they weren't the nicest or greatest of people. Guess that's what normally happened in a serious situation as such.

"So what's the place called?" Geoff asked once I was finished.

"Golden Gate Casino. It's pretty much right next to the Fremont Street Experience." I replied. "So is everyone okay with all this?"

It wasn't long until I was out on the streets once again, headed back to the casino with Izzy not far behind. Once we got there, I felt slightly relieved to see a tall policeman standing outside. Penelope and Stephanie seemed to be telling him the story, with Arlene chipping in every now and then. I decided to wait back until I was possibly needed.

"So what happened, was this person… in the casino when they took all that money?" Izzy asked.

I opened my mouth to reply, but stopped myself as I saw Stephanie motioning for us to come over. It looked like we also had some questions to answer.

I slowly walked over, Izzy following suit, but at a quicker pace.

"Did you guys find him locked up or did it happen just as you arrived?" Stephanie asked, the policeman then looking up from his notebook.

I looked to Izzy for an answer – she was one of the first ones back to the hotel, so she'd know better than me.

"No, the room was already locked when I got up there." She replied.

"And you say this woman still has the spare key?" The policeman asked.

"Well… I dunno, actually."

"It's pretty likely that she's still got it." I put in. "But there is a possibility of her losing it or… purposefully dropping it somewhere since she'd probably have no intention to use it anytime soon."

"Right." The policeman jotted down some more notes, then looked towards the casino. "I'm just going to call on some backup, and see if we can find any information about this woman." He walked off, going across the road to the Plaza Hotel and Casino.

"So… uh, maybe one of us should go in there and see what's going on." Arlene suggested, pointing to the casino entrance. "Oh yeah, I'm… not twenty-one yet. Who is?"

"Not me." Stephanie and I said simultaneously. I still had a few months until I would be, and Stephanie wasn't that long after.

"I still got a while!" Izzy chipped in, laughing.

All four of us turned to face Penelope, who had her arms folded was looking slightly indifferent.

"Alright, I'm going in." She said, sighing exasperatedly as she walked inside, disappearing around a corner at a jog.

"When's her birthday?" Arlene asked. "Well… if you know…"

"New Years' Day, surprisingly enough." I replied. Odd but true fact.

"Wow, that's a… interesting date for a birthday. Hey, different topic, but what have you been up to since you left the airport?"

"Well…" I began as Stephanie started laughing. "Yeah, it's a really long story."

"I'm up for it."

So that was it – I was going through another painfully long story, only starting at when I left the airport and finishing at when Penelope and I took our search to Fremont Street. By that point, I was slowly starting to get sick of telling the same chunk of the story over and over again. But I kept calm and just got on with it – people back at home would want to know all about it next.

Once I finished, Penelope came back out with two people. One was the police cadet who'd won the money, and the other looked to be from the same institute, except the only differences were her taller, slimmer stature, short brown hair and dark skin. Along with all that, she was also wearing a slightly different outfit.

"Did I… er, miss anything?" Penelope asked.

"Nope, I guess." Izzy replied, shrugging. "So what's happening in there?"

"Well… a lot, actually. Everyone's losing their minds because of the robbery, and the staff that are on at the moment are both ditzy blondes crying in the corner."

I slowly shook my head in astonishment – it really wasn't that pleasant at all.

"What do _we_ do then?" Arlene asked, sounding slightly worried. "Do we… stay here and try sort all that out for a minute, or go and find this woman? Wherever she's gone…"

We all went silent for a good few minutes, the only noises coming from other people nearby and inside the casino.

"We've gotta work out something." Stephanie eventually said, sighing. "But I dunno how easy it'll be when it's as late as this. I've been awake since quarter to five this morning… oh, Eastern Time."

"Well if you want, you can go back to the hotel right now." I put in, turning to face her. "You do look like you need a bit of sleep."

"Yeah… I definitely feel that way. Okay, I'm out for the night. Anyone else?"

I looked at Arlene and Izzy, who both seemed to be alright. But Penelope looked like she could just about fall asleep right then and there.

"You should go back. You look like you could drop dead any minute." I said, trying to stop myself from laughing.

"Whatever." Penelope said dryly, rolling her eyes. "The taxi guy _did_ come at the wrong time this morning…" She shrugged and stalked off, letting her arms hang loose by her sides.

"Did I just see what I thought I saw?" Stephanie exclaimed, nudging me.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"Penelope's… wearing an engagement ring?"

"Oh… yeah, I spotted that back at the pizza restaurant. I still don't understand it, but I really don't want to have to think about that right now."

"Huh… well I'm going. Ryan will be wondering where the heck I went off to." Stephanie turned to go, but looked over her shoulder. "Good luck with finding that crazy woman." She said with a laugh, walking off and going down the Fremont Street Experience.

Looking back to the others, I realized that I almost forgot about the police cadets standing there.

"Uh… do you mind relaying what happened in there?" I asked, pointing to the open door of the casino.

The shorter girl opened her mouth to speak, but shut it as the policeman stopped at the edge of our small group.

"We haven't yet got any details about this woman, but there are still questions to be answered." He said, pulling his notebook back out.

"Leave the questions to us." The taller cadet told Arlene, Izzy and I with a smile.

"I could do with food right now." I heard Arlene mumble from next to me. "All this is making me so hungry."

Before I knew it, the three of us were sitting inside a twenty-four hour café a couple of streets away, sipping glasses of water and eating ham, lettuce and tomato wraps.

At that point, I was just wanting to give up and go back to the hotel. But I still would have nowhere to sleep, and it would take a lot longer to get Noah out if we didn't have the key.

"So what do we do next?" Izzy asked after she finished her mouthful. "Izzy's tired, but I don't wanna stop yet!"

I hadn't exactly thought about that – what _would_ we do next?

"I don't really know. All I can think of at the moment is just to keep on looking around the city, because this woman… could still be here." I replied. "Or worse comes to worse, she's taken someone's car, driven out to the desert and is headed for California or Arizona."

"Then we'd have to get our butts out there… somehow, and try find where she's gone."

I looked out the window, trying to figure out where we went from here. It was a decent enough idea – searching around the city again. But I'd done that earlier for at least an hour, and I didn't really want to have to do it a second time.

"Well… if she's gone even further than the city, we definitely won't be walking out to look for her in the middle of the Mojave." I said, taking another sip of my drink. "We'd need cars to get out there, and if its pitch black, some big torches."

"Why don't we just go out there with the cops in their cars?" Arlene suggested. "Well… if that's what happened."

"We'd probably have to ask, or wait to be offered a ride out there. Besides, I guess they'd probably prefer to just have themselves out there."

"What about the key?" Izzy asked.

"The key… that's a good question. If the woman hasn't dropped it, we'll have to go out and try to get it from her. And who knows, she could suddenly throw it away and it'd disappear into a bush or something. But if it's lying around somewhere in the city… then I'm _praying_ that someone with a decent mind finds it."

A few minutes later, we had finished our wraps and drinks, and were back outside again. It wasn't far away from eleven o'clock, and the tiredness was really starting to set in on me. But I couldn't stop until I had that key.

Izzy suddenly got a phone call from someone, and we waited underneath the café's awning for her to finish.

"You know, you don't have to be here right now." I told Arlene, looking at her.

"Don't forget, she's got my bank card too." She said, sighing.

"Oh…" I _had_ forgotten about that. "Well that's true."

Izzy was then finished with her call, and she walked over to us, rubbing her eyes as she did so.

"That was Noah." She said, her arms flopping back down to her sides.

"Is he… well, surviving, I guess?" I asked, almost laughing at what I just said.

"Yep, he's good! Oh, he'd just finished charging his phone, and put yours on charge like ten minutes ago."

"Really?" Oh, how long I'd been waiting for a finally charging phone. "Tell him I said thank you, if he calls back. Or something."

"Coolios! Okay, let's… go somewhere else!"

It was back on the road once again, and this time we headed away from Fremont Street and The Strip.

I noticed a few minutes earlier that it was quieter outside, which was a nice change from the wild city streets that Penelope and I had to navigate our way through.

"Hey, are we sort of coming up to the residential area or something?" Arlene asked, looking around. "There's just not so many lit-up buildings around these streets, that's all…"

"Maybe we are." Izzy replied, yawning. "Oh no, I feel almost too tired…" She fell to her knees, looking down at the pavement. "Too tired…"

"You have to keep going, Izzy." I told her, kneeling down. "You have to."

"I… I can't… I'm so sorry guys…" And with that, her eyes fell shut and she slumped over, her head landing on my shoulder.

"What do we do now?" I asked Arlene in a hushed voice.

"I really have no idea…" She replied, then suddenly yawning as well. "Oh god, don't tell me we're all gonna fall asleep here…"

I opened my mouth to say something, but a yawn came out instead of words.

"I think it's… our only choice." I said, sighing heavily. "I don't know how we'll sleep out here, but we have to." I carefully put Izzy on the ground, lying on her side, and sat up.

I suddenly felt slightly shaky, and I started swaying, my eyes threatening to close any second.

"Emma, are you alright?" Arlene asked, looking slightly confused.

"I… don't know." I replied. I wanted to say more, but I had fell forward and landed on top of Izzy, my arms stopping my face from getting any damage. I was completely out to it.

Next thing I knew, someone was vigorously shaking me awake, and I slowly opened my eyes, expecting it to be light… but it was still very dark.

"Guys, we've got news!" I heard a voice say – Bridgette. "Bad news."

"Huh?" Arlene mumbled, what felt like the crown of her head pressed against my lower legs.

"What's happened?" I asked, looking up to see not only Bridgette, but Geoff and Owen too.

"Well… the woman… apparently stole a car from somewhere, drove it out onto the highway, and headed off from there." Bridgette replied. "And from what most of the road signs say, she's probably in the middle of the Mojave Desert by now."

What a stroke of bad luck – she _had_ gone out to the desert. I had no idea what we were to do next.

"She's in the desert?" Izzy suddenly exclaimed, sounding fairly wide awake. "Aw, come on! How do we get the room key now?"

Geoff pulled his phone out and tapped on the screen a few times, eventually gasping.

"The answer to that – try and find where Duncan is." He said with a grin. "That's right, he's found the key!"

I let out a heavy sigh, looking up to the sky. The key was found. I could finally get some sleep on a proper bed.

"So are we going now or-" I began, but Bridgette cut me off.

"No, no, you guys stay here." She said gently but firmly. "All three of you look tired out. I'll stay as well, and tell you about… something _very_ funny that happened about ten minutes ago."

Geoff and Owen then started snickering, turning around and walking off. Whatever had happened, it sounded like it was worth hearing about it.

"Hey Emma, can I kinda… get up?" Izzy asked as Arlene sat up.

I looked away in confusion before realizing that I was still on top of her, my forearms resting on the pavement.

"Sorry." I said quickly, pulling myself up to sitting and turning to face the road, stretching my legs out in front of me. "So what happened?"

"Well… first off, I'm guessing that you met… Alejandro?" Bridgette asked.

"I did. I sort of knew him previously, actually."

"And he's my new neighbour." Arlene put in. "Oh, I'm in an apartment complex in central Ottawa."

"Really?" I turned to her – that was quite surprising. "Um… about knowing him, that is."

"Yeah, I met him when he was having a tour of the next door apartment about a month ago. His girlfriend's a total bitch though."

Bridgette and Izzy laughed, obviously knowing all about it.

"That's Heather for ya!" Izzy said after calming down. "Anyway, what happened that was so funny?"

"Alright, on with the story." Bridgette crossed her legs and sighed, shaking her head. "So… I know Izzy will know this, but back at high school, Alejandro's last name was… Burromuerto. Well, he just told me, Geoff, Owen, Duncan… who else… oh, Gwen and Leshawna that it was all a complete joke, and he was dared to call himself that by his older brother José."

"Wow, so _that's_ where it came from!" Izzy said, laughing. "Oh, what does it mean?"

"Leshawna _did_ ask that question, actually. And right at that moment, Dawn walked past, and heard everything that Alejandro said. So she said, very matter-of-factly… and I quote – 'It means dead donkey.'"

I didn't know it was possible to laugh so hard. But after hearing that, I found myself lying on the ground within seconds, laughing until my cheeks hurt.

"That is amazing!" Izzy shouted, laughing again. "Wait, so Gonzalez _was_ actually his surname?"

"Yeah, Gonzalez. I don't think the principal back at Wawanakwa would think too greatly of seeing Burromuerto as someone's surname."

"Oh, that's so _good_! Izzy wondered if it was a fake name for a long time!"

"Anyway, how did you go with your searching?" I asked.

"It… was pretty hard. Heaps of times we thought we'd saw this woman, but all of those times, it actually wasn't her." Bridgette replied, shaking her head. "There's so much pink of many different shades out here tonight…"

"How did you find us out here?" Arlene asked.

"Well, Geoff and I were thinking of looking around the residential areas, when I got a phone call from Courtney, who was right next to the highway onramp. She said that a car – a dark blue Ford – pulled out onto the highway, and she saw a woman in the driver's seat with dark brown hair tied into a ponytail. And… yeah, she was wearing that pinkish-purplish colour."

I couldn't help cringing – that sounded very disappointing to witness.

"So then we walked down several streets, with Owen joining us about halfway through it, and then we… came across you guys."

"I guess we weren't… asleep for long, considering the fact that it's still dark." I said, looking around.

"Probably not. It was only quarter past eleven when we found you."

"Wow, we were asleep for twenty minutes." Izzy remarked with a laugh, looking at the time on her phone. "Oh, I should tell Noah that the key's been found!" She quickly typed out a text, pausing every now and then to think.

A few minutes later, Geoff arrived back, holding what looked like a key in his hand.

"Right down the south end of The Strip!" He said, chucking the key over.

I immediately reached out a hand and caught it. It was a key alright. What a relief.

"Is that a bank card in your other hand?" Arlene asked, standing up and running over.

"Oh, yeah. Found that on the side of a street going off The Strip."

"It… it could be mine! Let me see."

Everything seemed to be going right all at once. Apart from getting all that money back, but from now it was most likely a job for the police.

Arlene walked back, holding a small, plastic card in her hands and smiling.

"Well, I'm glad I've got my bank card back, but I need sleep more than this, or anything, really." She said. "All of us need it."

"We didn't get the woman and take the money back to its rightful owner, but for what it's worth right now, sleep is so much more valuable." I put in.

It was a slow walk back to the hotel, all five of us not wanting to race back. During that time, I got to learn a bit more about the rest of the people who went to that boarding school, whatever it was called. Heather had almost full control of the social ladder during her senior year. Noah _did_ have a massive family – eight siblings to be exact. There was a huge competition between several people for class president, which was eventually taken out by Courtney.

All of it was interesting, but there was one thing that had been quietly bugging me ever since breakfast. And after pushing it to the back of my mind many, _many_ times, I finally decided to let it out.

"Okay… I guess this isn't really something I'd be normally asking about…" I began, just as we passed the Plaza Hotel and Casino again.

"Here's my stop." Arlene said with a yawn. "I hope Jordan's not freaking out about me being gone for so long. He didn't text me back when I told him I was going to help you out with all this."

"Arlene!" A female voice shouted from some distance away. "You've been ages! Jordan's been worried sick about you since like half past ten!"

"Uh oh, maybe he is…" Arlene ran off, going around a small, ovular shaped building out the front of the hotel, supported by a cylindrical, walled-off stairway.

"Ooh, finally got a text back from Noah!" Izzy said excitedly, looking at her phone. "Oh… ew!" She retched back in disgust. "Look what he said!" She held her phone out in front of her and I quickly looked at it.

 _Thank god. I need to pee. Been waiting for an hour and it's unbearable._

" _Really_?" I shook my head in disbelief.

"Oh, that's just disgusting." Bridgette said, groaning. "Boys will be boys, I guess…"

It wasn't long before we were standing inside the hotel lobby, waiting for an elevator to come down.

"Man, it must be _late_." Geoff remarked, looking at his watch. "Yep, twenty-five minutes 'til midnight. Dang."

"Sorry for keeping all of you up for so long." I said as the middle elevator dinged. "I just wouldn't have been able to do it alone, or with one or two others."

"No worries, we got there in the end!" Bridgette put in with a smile. "It doesn't matter if all we were really looking for was just a key. Now that we've found it, it means we can all get sleep!"

We stepped into the middle elevator and Izzy pressed the button labelled '11'. The doors closed, and it took about ten seconds to get up to the eleventh floor.

Once the doors opened, I felt myself shaking slightly as I stepped out of the elevator.

"Hey Emma, you all good?" Izzy asked.

"Yeah… just feeling so relieved to finally be able to get some sleep." I replied, slowly walking over to the second to last door before the window.

"Who's there?" I heard Noah ask from the other side.

Keeping quiet, I slotted the key into the lock and turned it. A satisfying 'click' sounded out, and I used my other hand to open the door.

Almost on cue, Noah bolted out of the room, going down the hallway and hastily opening the bathroom door, slamming it shut once he was inside.

"Well that's a _massive_ weight off my shoulders." I said, sighing. "I can sleep now."

"You worked hard for it." Geoff said with a grin, giving me a thumbs up. "Man, I wish I was that motivated. I would have just camped out in someone else's room!"

"Geoff, did you tell everyone else they need to be back here now?" Bridgette asked.

"Oh crap… only Duncan and DJ. Better spread the message round!"

I walked into the room and immediately saw my phone on the floor, charger plugged in. It was a welcome sight, but I wouldn't be able to even use my phone until tomorrow – most people in Ottawa would definitely be asleep by now.

"Oh, you guys found the key? Woo!" Owen called from the room next door.

"Yeah, we got it!" Izzy cheered tiredly. "Izzy's gonna sleep now."

I looked to my bed, considering taking my shoes off and just sleeping on top of the covers as I was. But a thought struck me, and I turned around and bent down to pick up my phone. I unlocked it, and saw another couple of messages, which were sent hours ago. Both were from Kitty.

 _Las Vegas? LAS VEGAS? How… did you get all the way over there? Isn't your passport like at home or something?_ Sent right on midday.

 _Emma, pleeease answer! Everyone's going nuts! And Maria feels so bad for taking you to the party…_ Twenty past two.

I was most likely the talk of town after last night's happenings. I wished I could text back, but I knew that Kitty hated, and I mean _hated_ , being woken up in the middle of the night by a text message, no matter who it was from.

I heard a door open and close out in the hallway, and I carefully put my phone back down, locking it and standing up.

I suddenly stopped, remembering something. In my bag, I had packed a pair of pyjama pants, which were most likely buried at the bottom, hence why I never came across them.

Kneeling down again, I reached over for my bag and quickly unzipped the main compartment, then digging my hand in deep. I came out with a pair of light pink, flannel pants.

I quickly changed into them and just about crawled over to the bed. The door was still open, but I was too tired to do anything else.

One of the craziest days of my life had just gone past. I didn't know if it could get any weirder, but I would find out some time in the future. Possibly even tomorrow.

I was asleep before I knew it, the last thing I heard being the door quietly closing.

 **xx**

 **Hallelujah, it's done! Three days ago, I was thinking that I'd never get there, and have to update it the weekend after. Here I am now, publishing this and feeling pretty accomplished. Hope you all enjoyed it. :)**

 **Until next time!**


	9. Chapter 9: A Grand Morning

**Eek, sorry guys, this is later than I thought it would be!**

 **I will say that my holiday in January kinda… stuffed up my updating schedule, so I don't really know what to do with it now. Anyway, on with the story!**

 **No owner ship of Total Drama. OCs are mostly filler characters (and are mine).**

 **xx**

 **Chapter 9 – A Grand Morning**

 **xx**

I was normally a pretty good sleeper. Not that much would disturb me, if Kitty's loud wakeup calls from when I was in middle school counted.

But that night, I was almost dead to the world. I had been so tired, and I didn't wake up until someone suddenly opened the door very loudly, and I almost jumped.

"Hey you two lazybones! Get up!" Izzy shouted with a laugh. "Today's gonna be crazy and Izzy wants _nobody_ to miss out!"

I could only groan and pull my pillow out from underneath me, throwing it on top of my head. There probably _were_ worse wakeup calls than Kitty's.

"Izzy, leave them be!" I heard someone say from the hallway. "They'll be like, _so_ tired after yesterday! Especially Erin… no, Emily…"

"Lindsay, her name's Emma." A frustrated sounding Heather said with a groan. "Ugh, you haven't changed a _bit_ …"

"Ohh, right!"

"Is it breakfast time yet?" Owen asked.

With a lot of talking out in the hallway, I decided that I wasn't going to get any more sleep, and threw my pillow onto the floor.

"Yeah Emma, that's the spirit!" Izzy cheered as I pulled myself up to sitting. "Come on, Noah! It's half past eight!"

I looked to the window and saw a perfectly clear blue sky – good start to the day. And I had a strange feeling that there were more good things to come.

"Everyone ready to go down for breakfast?" Geoff called from down the hallway.

"Not yet!" Izzy called back.

Standing up, I walked over to my black bag and grabbed my jeans from on top of it. I knew it was a sunny day, but still, it was only early spring. I turned to the small plastic bag which had the magenta top that Izzy had selflessly paid for. It needed a wash, but I also needed something other than my grey or purple tops.

"How long have you been up?" I asked Izzy for no particular reason at all.

"Oh, nearly an hour." Izzy replied with a shrug. "Ha, I slept like a total log last night!"

"Same. I'm just… glad I actually _got_ sleep, I guess. I wanted to give up several times while I was out there, but it was still worth it in the end. Only now I can say I woke up in a hotel bed feeling refreshed, instead of waking up with a hangover on an aeroplane."

Fifteen minutes later, I was showered, dressed, and in an elevator headed down to the ground floor. Once I got out, I saw the odd group of people scattered around the lobby, all talking. It was definitely a much nicer feeling than the previous night, when it was pretty crowded.

The dining room was almost exactly the same – just a few tables full, and some with only two or three people at them.

I found myself seated at a small, four seater table with Izzy and Owen across from me. The seat next to me remained empty – I presumed Noah would take it once he got down here, but it could end up being anyone.

And, in fact, several people stopped by to sit in that seat. First was Stephanie.

"Hey guys, did you find that dang key?" She asked, standing behind the empty seat.

"We didn't ourselves, but I didn't get told where it was." I replied. "I didn't get to bed until about quarter to twelve or something though."

"Quarter to twelve? Wow! Hold on, gonna get me a juice – I wanna hear more about all this!" Stephanie ran off, coming back a few minutes later with a glass of apple juice, and sat down on the empty chair. "So… what did I miss last night?"

I told her the whole story from when she had left to finally arriving back at the hotel. She was laughing quite a bit once I'd mentioned my quick nap I had out on the street.

"Man, if I was out there for longer than I actually was, I would have probably fallen asleep on a street corner too!" She remarked, shaking her head and laughing.

Once I'd finished the story, Izzy suggested that we went up to get some breakfast, to which Owen happily obliged to, of course. Stephanie went back to her own table, and the three of us took turns in getting breakfast, as we had no belongings with us and didn't want to come back to find someone else sitting there.

Next person in the chair was a bit of a surprise – Sammy. In fact, she was walking past with a plate of toast when I called her over.

"I saw you and Amy come out of the elevator last night… and I guess it was good to see what was happening right then." I told her, shrugging and smiling.

"Oh! Yeah… I finally found my courage and stood up to her." Sammy said, sitting down on the edge of the chair. "Well, it was more brought out when I realized how annoying Amy actually had been." She put her plate down and picked up a piece of toast with marmalade on it. "But… it feels like a huge weight has come off my shoulders!"

"What's she doing now?" Izzy asked, sounding curious.

"Amy? She's sitting at a table by herself, looking kinda confused about everything. I can only hope that she's thinking about all she'd done over all those years."

"She better! Hey, what was up with her pizza face last night?"

All four of us started laughing, Izzy seeming to find what she'd just said quite hilarious.

"Yeah… Amy didn't order what I wanted, _without telling me_ , so when I got it I… threw a piece of it at her face and emptied my water glass onto her."

"Oh, that's what happened!" Izzy laughed again. "Serves her right!"

"Did I hear _something_ about _someone_ finally standing up to their sister?" A voice called from not too far away, causing Sammy to blush and giggle.

"I gotta go." She said, picking up her plate and walking off.

I turned back to my own plate of toast, grabbing the small packet of raspberry jam and opening it.

"They're over here! But one of them is… still upstairs, I think." Stephanie called from some distance away.

"Huh?" Izzy looked up from her bowl of cornflakes. "Oh, I think we got more questions to answer!"

I looked over my shoulder, and saw a fairly tall policewoman headed towards our table.

"Sorry for interrupting your breakfasts, but I do have some good news." She said, stopping at the end of the table.

"Ooh, cool!" Izzy grinned. "Oh, sit down there if you want." She gestured to the empty chair.

"Thank you." The policewoman went around and sat down on the chair, pulling a notebook and pen out. "Now, we managed to retrieve the money last night, although it took us at least two or three miles through the desert, headed for California. Despite that, the woman didn't stay for long, and drove off in the car. But what mattered most was that the money got returned to its rightful owner."

"Sorry for interrupting, but we also got the bank card and the room key back last night." I said after swallowing a mouthful of toast.

"Great. Now excuse me, but there's still more business to be done on this case, and I have to be back outside very soon." The policewoman stood up and quickly walked off, leaving the chair where it was.

I then sensed a presence behind me, but didn't think much of it until Izzy slowly motioned for me to turn around, looking quite unsure. I did just that, and nearly fell off my chair.

"Uh… hey." Jake said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away.

I hadn't been more confused in my life – I just didn't understand why he was here. I had presumed that he didn't really want anything to do with me, just like those last few days before I found out he was cheating on me. And I didn't want to have to face him, either.

"What do you want?" I asked him, standing up

Jake was silent, eyes still looking away, and hand still behind his neck. This was stupid. If he wanted to say something, then that wasn't getting him anywhere.

"You know what? Just go away if you don't have anything you want to say." I said, crossing my arms.

"No… I- um…"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Surely he was here for a reason. I looked over my shoulder and saw Penelope watching on from a table about twenty feet away, looking just as confused as I was. I raised an eyebrow at her, only getting a shrug back in response.

"You heard what she said, you weirdo!" Izzy snapped, leaping up onto her seat and crouching there.

I would have said more, but I spotted a hand tap Jake on the shoulder, and he flinched slightly, stepping to the side and turning around. I was more than surprised to see who it was.

"Lost something?" Noah asked, his indifferent expression not changing.

"Um… no, no…" Jake began, but didn't get time to finish.

"Alright, go back to your table before you _do_ lose something."

"Like your sanity." I blurted out, clapping my hands over my mouth to hide the slowly growing smile on my face. _Whoops_. Oh well.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Izzy and Owen also looked rather amused by what I'd said. But I could tell that Jake was more shocked than anything. Looking back at me with a raised eyebrow, he walked off. I turned around as my eyes followed him past a couple of people, past the buffet table, and right out the door.

It was eerily quiet for a good five or ten seconds, the other people around us just going on with their own business. Izzy's eyes darted between me and Noah, her smile growing wider very quickly.

And right then, I heard laughter. But it wasn't Izzy. Or Owen. Or Noah. And it definitely wasn't me.

"Who's that?" Owen wondered, looking to his right.

Suddenly, I realized I knew that laugh. What's more, it belonged to the last person I expected to find the incident funny. I looked over my shoulder for confirmation, and my estimate was correct.

Penelope had her arms on the table, with her forehead resting on them, and her body was shaking as she laughed.

Now I was just downright confused once again.

"Izzy does _not_ get this." I heard Izzy say quietly.

I had no idea what to do next, so I turned back to my breakfast and picked up my last piece of toast. One thing I did think of though – something was possibly up between Penelope and Jake.

"If she laughed at that, then something's going on there." I whispered to Izzy as Noah went over to the buffet table.

"I dunno, maybe…" Izzy looked up at the roof, seeming to be thinking.

I quickly finished off my toast, and excused myself to go back upstairs. As soon as I unlocked the room, I went straight over to my phone, pulled the charger off, and opened my messages.

There wasn't anything new.

I sighed and walked over to the bed, putting my phone on the nightstand and looking out the window.

A lot of things had already happened only this morning. And most likely, there was much more to come.

Suddenly, something that I'd almost forgotten about came to mind – my college assignment.

When I started on it, I had planned to do an essay, and the topic was going to be the impact of tourism in cities such as New York, London or Tokyo even. The only problem – I wasn't getting the greatest results from my internet searches.

The now very familiar dinging of an elevator brought me back to reality, but I didn't hear anyone come out. I was however proved wrong as Dawn appeared at the doorway.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" I asked, standing up.

"Yes, there is." Dawn replied, slowly walking in.

I couldn't help but wonder what was happening on the ground floor.

"So what… is it, I guess?"

"Well, I noticed earlier today that there was a bit of pink in your aura."

"Oh… pink means love, right?"

"Yes. And this pink is at its strongest whenever Noah is nearby."

Oh crap. No, no, I couldn't be. No way. But the denial in me was fighting a losing battle against my curiosity, and I gave in.

"What about him then? Is he the same?" I (sort of) already knew the answer to that question, but I wasn't sure if it had changed since last night.

"Yes. Very much so."

I was almost speechless. I knew that what Dawn was saying was most probably right, but I didn't want to believe it for some reason or another.

An elevator dinged again, this time a loud whoop echoing out as the door opened, which I knew all too well by now.

"Hey, who's up here?" Izzy called, eventually skidding to a stop outside the room. "Oh, hey Dawn! Whatcha doing?" She wandered in, then looking over at me as she plopped onto the floor, crossing her legs. "And hey Emma! What's up with that red face? Huh?'

"Red face?" I repeated.

"Emma, you're blushing!"

I was blushing. How embarrassing.

"Uh, it's nothing… yeah…" I was doing a _fabulous_ job of covering myself up. Not really.

"Oh, Izzy _knows_ what it is!" Izzy laughed. "Come on, admit it. You like Noah, right?"

I could just about feel my cheeks going redder by now.

"Izzy, I think this is a good time to stop, and let her think about it some more." Dawn said, looking over at Izzy before turning back to me. "Now… oh, it's visible that you are rather… inexperienced in love?"

"I… am." I replied. "Jake was my first, actually…"

"He was?" Izzy exclaimed. "When was it?"

"The… break up?"

"No, no, when you guys got together."

"Oh. That's one day that I don't think I'll ever forget, even if everything went a bit… weird a couple of years later."

"Ooh, what happened?"

"Okay… well, this happened when I was young and oblivious… fourteen years old, due to be fifteen a few months later. At the time I had a pretty big crush on Jake, who was the… new guy in my grade. What I didn't know was that he had an eye for me as well. So… one day, he apparently didn't show up to English."

"So you were in the same English class?" Dawn asked.

"And did you guys hang out a bit sometimes?" Izzy continued.

"Yes to… both of those. We did talk a few times, mostly in English, geography, or at lunch. Anyway… the teacher – Mr McAdams – still marked him present, which most of the people in class didn't understand… as well as myself. Five minutes later, Jake came in and sat at his desk… which was the one behind me, at the end of the row."

"And then what'd he do?" Izzy asked.

"Well… nothing until the end of the class. Mr McAdams was just about to dismiss it, but then said that Jake had… something to say before the class was officially done. Now I can't remember what his exact words were, of course, but he did say that he'd found the right girl. All the girls in the class then started whispering excitedly, but I just stayed quiet. Jake then said that… and I can quote this – 'it's none of you whisperers'. All the girls… or most of them… then turned to me, half of them looking excited, the other half shooting death glares. And according to my friend Maria, I was blushing tomato red."

"Huh?" Someone exclaimed from outside. "Wait, what's going on?"

I almost fell back onto the bed as Penelope slowly walked over to stand in the doorway. What was even more surprising – there was a certain ring absent.

"Whaddaya want this time?" Izzy asked, standing up and crossing her arms. "Don't-"

"Calm down, I'm not here to do anything stupid." Penelope interrupted. "But it depends on what you classify as 'stupid', I guess." She walked inside, stopping after a few steps.

I then noticed that Dawn was looking at Penelope, her expression slowly turning from confusion to surprise. Izzy was looking between them, also seeming rather puzzled.

"Something… something's not right with this picture." I said, stepping forward.

"There is something odd here." Dawn put in, nodding. "But I won't say anything."

I turned to Penelope, who then looked at me dead in the eye. Something had definitely happened.

"Emma, I'm sorry." She said without any fluctuation.

I stepped back in surprise – was this too good to be true?

"I know, it seems a bit… too late for this, but last night I guess the seventeen year old girl I was all those years ago was itching to come out. It's a weakness of mine, at times."

I couldn't believe what she was saying. I looked to Dawn, who merely nodded her head – this was real alright.

"And I guess I should also apologize for all the crap I did back at high school." Penelope continued, surprising me even more. "I can tell that something like that would be hard to accept forgiveness for, but those days are starting to come back to haunt me. And all I really want to do now is to leave the old me behind. For good."

I was completely and utterly lost for words. Never, and I mean _never_ , was I expecting Penelope Hudson to apologize for every single incident she caused at school, whether I was involved or not.

"I…" I began, sighing in frustration when nothing else came out. "Sorry, trying to find my words."

"That's okay. No one's waiting for me. I have heaps of time."

No one was waiting for her. I looked at her now bare left hand, and realized that it could only mean one thing.

"Oh yeah, this." Penelope held her hand up. " _Well_ , Jake had been a bit of a slacker with everything over the past four or five months. A few weeks ago, he seemed to be cleaning his act up – and proved it by proposing to me last week. Then a couple of days before Vegas, he was getting lazy again. I gave him a chance to get his crap together, but of course, he didn't even try, and just got worse. So as a result of that, the ring was transferred from my finger to his jeans pocket. And it's staying there."

What a piece of news. It was pretty important, too.

"Wow… well, now that I've heard _that_ , there's only one thing left for me to say." It was my turn to look Penelope dead in the eye, and I could tell that Izzy seemed to find it hilarious. "I accept your apology."

With that, the two of us burst out laughing, Izzy joining in not long after. Dawn left the room, and I only just managed to hear her say that her work here was done.

"What the HECK is going on down there?" A voice shouted from down the hallway as Penelope fell to her knees. "Somebody told a good joke or something?"

"It's… it's not a joke!" Izzy howled, falling backwards onto my bed and… still laughing.

"Come and see for yourself!" Penelope managed to say between laughs.

"What the… okay, I'm coming!"

After falling onto the floor, I slowly started to calm down, my back leaning against the bed.

"Alright, I'm… here… what…"

I looked up to see Stephanie standing in the doorway, eyes wide and her mouth dropped open.

"Can somebody please tell me what's happening?" She asked. "Because I have no freaking idea what all this is about."

"Oh, just got a couple of stories which will probably leave you laughing as well." I replied, sighing.

"Not that... but what happened anyway?"

I relayed to Stephanie what had happened, pausing at a point to let Penelope tell her about Jake.

"So since I'd heard that," I began as Stephanie tried to hold in her laughter until the end, "I decided that it was enough to accept the apology. And _I_ looked _her_ dead in the eye as I said it."

And we were all laughing again. Several people went past outside, but they mostly just ignored us.

"Phew! Damn, that's just gold." Stephanie said, letting out a deep breath. "Hey, what happened exactly when you dumped his butt in the gutter?"

"Oh. That's where it gets even better." Penelope replied, shifting around so she sat cross-legged. "I was just about to go and have a shower, and I gave the ring to Jake to... look after, I guess. And yes, I had already decided earlier that I'd dump him."

"Ooh, that's sneaky!" Izzy laughed. "What was next?"

"Well. Jake actually knows nothing yet, and he's out somewhere with a friend he bumped into at the airport."

"So you haven't seen him since you went off to have a shower?" I asked as I pulled myself up onto the bed.

"Nope. But for this to play out, I'm gonna need to move all my stuff out to... somewhere."

"Oh, put it all in here if you like."

"Or next door." Izzy chimed in, jerking a thumb behind her. "We're all leaving today, so if you are too, then awesome!"

"I'm here for a couple more days though." Stephanie put in, raising a hand.

"Thanks! And I did change myself onto another flight to Ottawa about fifteen minutes ago or something, which leaves... this afternoon, at half past four."

"Half past four? That's our flight!"

"Oh, really? Well... I guess that's convenient. Anyway, can I move my stuff up here now? I just don't know when Jake will be back... and timing's pretty important."

"Of course! Ooh, this is so exciting!"

Before I knew it, I was three floors below, helping Penelope pack up her suitcase. Despite the fact that she'd only been here for a day, it was already a bit of a mess.

"Lost couple of tops in there, so I was a bit... wild in my search." She told me while bending down and putting a pile of shorts in.

"Right." I nodded, grabbing what felt like a make-up bag from the nightstand. "Oh, another question... but why are you going to Ottawa instead of... Winnipeg, is it?"

"Yeah, Winnipeg. Well… there's two reasons. Firstly, when I was looking for flights, I didn't want it to be any later than six o'clock. There were heaps of flights, but the earliest I could get for Winnipeg was seven. That's where the second reason comes in – my parents and little sisters moved back to Ottawa not long after I started college, so I guess I could go and see them as well."

"Why did they move back? If you don't mind me asking."

"Oh, my grandma had a bad fall, and needed all the support she could get. There was no other family in Ottawa, so my mom and dad decided that they'd move back."

It wasn't long before everything was packed, and we were back on the eleventh floor.

Penelope lay her suitcase down by the window and dropped her handbag on top of it, quickly running back out afterwards.

"Just left something downstairs!" She called.

I sat down on the bed and reached over for my phone, which was on the nightstand. I unlocked it and went to my messages.

Nothing there, except for a single, one-worded message.

 _Emma?_

It was sent twenty minutes ago by Maria.

I stared at the message for a few minutes – and it told me a lot of things.

The whole neighbourhood was possibly worried about my 'disappearance', or even all of Ottawa for that matter. The police could have been called onto the scene. My mom would be cooped up in her bedroom, with me being the only thing on her mind. Kitty would be in hysterics.

I wanted to go home as soon as possible. But I really had no choice, other than to join everyone else tonight on their flight back. Especially if I didn't have the right money.

Voices suddenly came into earshot, yet they all seemed so far away.

"Emma?"

"Whoa, is she alright?"

"What's happening?"

"Emma, are you okay?"

My vision went blurry, and I fell to the side, somebody seeming to only just catch me by my arm.

 **xx**

 **Phew, done. Hope you all enjoyed it :)**

 **Next chapter… I'm not sure when that'll come out, but I'll have to see how I go with it.**

 **Until next time!**


End file.
